


Answering Two Calls

by cognomen, MayGlenn



Series: Man Has Only Two Masters [2]
Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Anal Sex, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Multi, Napoleon is a Little Shit, Nazis, Operas, Period-Typical Homophobia, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, Sharing Body Heat, Spies & Secret Agents, Threesome - A/A/O, Threesome - F/M/M, Vacation, body painting, commitment issues, relationship drama
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-06-29
Packaged: 2019-05-01 23:15:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 37,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14531505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cognomen/pseuds/cognomen, https://archiveofourown.org/users/MayGlenn/pseuds/MayGlenn
Summary: “We mostly shot people until they told us where you were,” Gaby admits.“No magic at all,” Napoleon sulks, surprisingly good-naturedly for someone who very nearly froze to death. He hisses when he curls his cold fingers around the warm mug, but it feels better to hold it, even if he lets Gaby do most of the supporting. “But I won’t fault the results. Not that I didn’t have everything under control.”Gaby laughs at him, shaking her head. “Your death was all part of the plan?”“No,” Napoleon says, leaning to kiss her cheek, gratefully. “But my backup is excellent.”





	1. Chapter 1

He’s sure he’d been doing so well. Napoleon had made his moves carefully, sounded out his options. Maybe it’s a sign that he’s getting old when instead of in bed with their target, he winds up chained to a meat hook in deep freeze. He’s unsure if this is better or worse than uncle Rudy's electric chair. 

He’d be able to pick the lock, if he could feel his fingers, but by the time he regains consciousness his whole body is shivering and his hands are numb with a combination of supporting all of his body weight and the frozen temperatures that cause his breath to fog and are responsible for all the frozen sides of beef surrounding Napoleon, offending his sensibilities.

Then again, as he wills his body to obey him so he can arch up and try to unloop the handcuff chain from the hook—the first attempt ends quickly as his whole body shivers convulsively, trying to keep him alive—he’d offered himself for a different sort of consumption, so who is he really to complain?

His second attempt is slightly better, and the third finally jumps the chain off the hook, and Napoleon drops to the freezing ground just in time to discover they’ve taken his shoes; and the  _ tracker _ and his bare feet on the cement floor feel like they’re already starting to freeze.

By the time they finally find him, he’s given up trying to pick the lock and focused instead on trying to survive, huddling with his hands pinned between his thighs and his belly to try and keep them from getting frostbitten. 

Illya had been worried the second Napoleon had gone out, of course, but it took until nearly three in the morning and  _ no word _ for Gaby to worry, too. He was supposed to check in. You can’t just expect to sleep your way into a mafia and not contact your partners and not have them worry. 

Gaby is prepared to go in like the jilted alpha, demanding her omega be returned to her, but the tracker only leads them to Napoleon’s shoes in the trash behind the bar. 

(Gaby retrieves them, knowing Napoleon will want them back.)

They spend the next hour shooting their way through the mob until someone tells them where they put Napoleon. Gaby runs to check, while Illya keeps the rest covered. He’s waiting only for confirmation that they actually found Napoleon before executing the rest of the mafiosos.

“Napoleon!” Gaby cries, down on her knees in the meat locker. She’s already shivering in the cold (and her small dress) and heaves Napoleon into her arms and out of the freezer. She has no idea how long he’s been in there, but his lips are blue and his fingertips and toes are a dark color. 

“Shit, shit,” Illya says, seeing him, and holstering his gun. “We need to get him back to hotel  _ now. _ Can you drive?” 

Gaby is shaken. Napoleon’s  _ hands _ —

“Can you drive?” 

“Yes!” 

Illya picks him up. “Come on, then!” 

Napoleon only seems to register them dimly, leaning into Illya’s warm body on instinct; somewhere in his cold-fogged mind he knows it’s  _ Illya _ and he can trust Illya. He’s also warm, almost so warm Napoleon can’t stand it originally; it feels hot, painfully so, to his frozen skin.

“Where are we going?” Gaby asks, as Illya puts Napoleon into the back seat of the roadster they’d been issued as part of their cover. 

“Back to the hotel, for now.” They have a hotel here, too, even though they’ve been here over a month. 

She feels wild and nervous, and doesn’t like how small and blue Napoleon looks. She’d thought that was only cartoons, where people turned blue. “He’s breathing right? Why isn’t he shivering?”

“He’s breathing,” Illya says. He slides into the back with him, crouching awkwardly in the small space and opening his shirt and trousers. They can worry about the handcuffs later—they are not very tight. He gets Napoleon’s feet wedged between his thighs and holds his hands up to his neck. Napoleon is frigid enough to make Illya shudder, but he keeps moving Napoleon’s extremities—under his arms, against his belly—when his skin cools too much to be useful. “Come on, Cowboy, damn it, wake up!” 

It takes everything Gaby has to drive with her eyes on the road and not keep looking back to see if Napoleon has roused yet. She steels herself to it, puts on her war face and drives as fast as she dares back to the hotel. She’s angry she’d let this happen, somehow, even though they all knew there were times when it was going to. Times when they all would face danger.

She tries to tell herself that it’s not because Napoleon is an omega that it feels like she’s failed him as his alpha by not preventing this.

He looks marginally better when she parks, when Illya gathers Napoleon against himself and she rushes for the door, but he’s still not awake. Probably, given the indignity of it, of being manhandled up the stairs and into the hotel room while still in handcuffs and with Gaby carrying his shoes because she can’t think what else to do is not something he would have appreciated, if he were conscious.

“Get him in the bed,” Gaby instructs. “Under all the blankets. We can’t put him in the bath until he’s shivering, it’ll be too fast.”

Illya nods, letting Gaby pull back the covers so he can deposit Napoleon in bed. Then, methodically, he strips off his own clothes, leaving them in a pile, and then he tears Napoleon’s clothes off, like he had honestly been wanting to do for months. The shirt is ruined but the trousers are safe, and then Illya is crawling into bed with him, pulling Napoleon to his chest. 

“Take off your clothes, get on the other side,” he tells Gaby.

Gaby winces at how cold his skin is when she crawls in and presses herself against Napoleon, gasping as she rubs her hands over his, and blows on them like you would waiting at the bus stop. Finally, slowly, Napoleon animates—with an explosive shiver that seems to run through all their bodies as Gaby tries to sooth him, unsure how conscious he is.

“Come back to us, Napoleon,” She murmurs, frowning at the bruises on his wrists, shivering herself now because of her contact with him. She presses closer in spite of it, murmuring to Illya, “Maybe we really should chain him up permanently.”

“Find a lock I can’t pick,” Napoleon’s voice comes soft between them, sounding harsh from the cold, and tired. He shifts a little, taking a deeper breath than he had been; he feels sore  _ everywhere _ from the effort of shivering, aching in muscles he didn’t know he had, but his body keeps doing it anyway, desperate to keep him alive.

“This one, apparently,” Illya jokes in relief, arms going around both of them. He certainly has no idea how to get the cuffs off until Napoleon can pick his way out of them. His tools are not with him—they haven’t been for a while, since Napoleon’s are better. He tucks Napoleon under his chin, cold nose against his neck, and kisses his hair. “I'm going to make you some tea in a minute. Stay awake, Cowboy.”

Gaby reaches down and bends Napoleon's knees so that his feet are tucked between her legs. She's embarrassed at her cock for going a little hard, because now is absolutely not the time! 

“Give me just a minute when I can feel my hands,” Napoleon promises. “I did manage to better my situation somewhat.”

“Your hair smells like meat,” Gaby observes.

“I was hung up in the back with the beef,” Napoleon admits. Now that the cold is receding from his fingers and toes the feeling is back and they  _ hurt _ . He pushes closer against Illya because he’s not really thinking well, or because it feels good to be so close against the both of them, to feel like even his extreme vulnerability is covered over by their presence, for now. And they smell  _ good _ . “I’m sorry to have worried you.”

Illya is worried enough to keep joking: “You hear this, Gaby? I think we might have rescued wrong Cowboy.”

But he slides closer, too, pulling Gaby close so Napoleon is pressed between them, like a flower. 

“It's all right, Cowboy,” he murmurs, finally. He tucks Napoleon’s hands between his body and the bed, where there's a warm pocket, and when Napoleon is about to complain, he kisses him quiet. “Shh. We will just—”

The phone rings. 

Gaby and Illya look at each other, but Illya was about to make tea, anyway, so he gets up to answer the phone, rolling Napoleon onto his back so Gaby can climb on top of him.

It's Waverly.

“So there’s rather a large pile of bodies laying about,” Waverly begins the conversation casually, but with an edge to his voice. “Leaving our operation in a bit of a shambles, I’d say.”

“They locked Napoleon in meat freezer,” Illya growls, cutting Waverly off. “They threatened  _ my _ ...team.” 

Waverly sighs. “Did you at least recover our agent?”

“I’d like a bath,” Napoleon confides in Gaby, easing his arms around her shoulders as best he can. He retrieves a bobby pin from her hair, and gives her a semblance of a rakish wink as he goes to work on the cuffs. “Will all three of us fit in the tub, do you think?”

Illya turns back to the bed to assess, and allows a small grin as Napoleon, still trembling, tries to pick the handcuffs and demands a bath. “Yes, he’s here. Not dead.”

“Hospital?” 

Illya raises an eyebrow at Gaby, who overhears, and shakes her head. 

“No. Will take care of him here.” 

“Well, that’s good news,” Waverly begins, “but Kuryakin, I must impress upon you the danger of habits of violence like these. I need hardly remind you this is a  _ cold  _ war, and the people we deal with are too dangerous to kill. You bring a knife, they bring a gun; you start killing people, they set off nuclear…” 

Illya has set the phone down by now to make tea, letting Waverly keep talking. “Stay. Let me run bath first.”  

“I should ask how you found me, but that would ruin the magic of it,” Napoleon says, still sounding a little groggy but more like himself as he springs the lock on the cuffs and reveals his badly bruised wrists.

“We killed some people,” Gaby reveals, shifting to keep her erection away from Napoleon’s thigh. She wets a handkerchief and dabs at the bruises to cool them. “Bad people.”

“Well. Not subtle but effective,” Napoleon shivers again.

Illya would probably be embarrassed—would be embarrassing himself just as Gaby is—but he is too worried. He picks up the phone again to, “Kuryakin, are you listening to—”

“Yes. Sorry for taking care of mafia den for you,” he says, and hangs up before leaving the phone off the hook.

“Drink this,” he instructs Napoleon, but handing Gaby the mug of warm but weak tea. He disappears into the bathroom. 

Gaby helps Napoleon sit up, cradled against her chest and wrapped up in the blankets, holding the mug of tea up to his lips for him. 

“We mostly shot people until they told us where you were,” she admits.

“No magic at all,” Napoleon sulks, surprisingly good-naturedly for someone who very nearly froze to death. He hisses when he curls his cold fingers around the warm mug, but it feels better to hold it, even if he lets Gaby do most of the supporting. “But I won’t fault the results.”

He pauses for a beat. “Not that I didn’t have everything under control.”

Gaby laughs at him, shaking her head. “Your death was all part of the plan?”

“No,” Napoleon says, leaning to kiss her cheek, gratefully. “But my backup is excellent.”

Illya smiles wistfully, but also with great contentment—as much as can be had with his idiot of a possible-lover so close to death—at the scene. “Come here, Cowboy. Let's get you in the bath. Only room for two, I'm afraid.”

He carries Napoleon into the bathroom, but waits for Gaby’s assistance. “We want to get his core warm first, then lower arms and legs in. You should get in first, Gaby.”

She looks a little chilled, herself, and nods. “It’s as if you assume I have some experience juggling giant injured men in baths…”

“There are worse things to be experienced in,” Napoleon answers, still wrapped in the blankets and not looking forward to surrendering all that warmth, even for the promise of a nice, warm bath. He’s at least helpful as Illya unwinds him, seeming reluctant to let Napoleon go, and Gaby helps him in.

Napoleon’s clinginess is as endearing as it is unsettling—as always, Illya is unsure if he's faking it. He murmurs against Napoleon’s temple. “I won't drop you.”

Sucking air through his teeth in a sharp hiss, Napoleon grips the side of the tub and lifts himself back out for an instant; it seems almost  _ scaldingly _ hot, even though he’s much warmer than he had been at first, his teeth still start chattering as he lowers himself in slowly, and Gaby pulls him down.

“Might have liked the first time you two saw me naked to be a little more dignified,” Napoleon laments, through clenched teeth.

“You had lots of opportunities,” Gaby tells him. 

“Plenty,” Illya agrees, holding up Napoleon’s feet. Gaby is keeping his elbows out of the water. “I know it hurts, but you will be okay.”

“Shh,” Gaby says, like she's calming a child, and slowly they lower Napoleon’s limbs into the water.

Napoleon actually closes his eyes, but keeps his voice in check. He  _ wants _ to shout, but it’s easier not to with Gaby and Illya soothing him, grounding him. He would never admit that he’d needed it, but it does make the tingling and pain bearable. He feels like his fingers are separate entities, all painful.

Feeling how tight his body is in her arms, Gaby just holds on, carefully supporting Napoleon until the worst of it fades.

“I don’t think there’s any permanent damage,” Napoleon manages, flexing his hands under the water. “But not too much longer and there would have been. I’ll make a note not to repeat the experience.”

“Good,” Illya says, and rewards this with a kiss to Napoleon’s temple. He smiles. “What would we do without your hands?”

If he feels a little starstruck from the kiss (as Illya’s always make him feel), Napoleon hides it well. “Learn to pick locks with my teeth.”

Gaby huffs against the back of his neck. “Illya, pour our hero a glass of scotch.”

Illya nods, getting up and returning with a half pour. 

“Let me hold it for you.” It's just on the edge of a question.  _ Please let me help. _

“Come here,” Napoleon agrees, his body so sore and tired that he won't protest the help. He takes a sip with Illya’s help and almost grimaces even though it's excellent scotch; it burns, and the peat heavy scotch scent mixes alluringly with the alpha hormones he's suddenly very aware of. 

_ Now?  _ He thinks at his traitorous body. There's still time, a day or two. Maybe enough to recover, but he'll be in their company. It's going to rush things along.

Then Gaby gets her nails into his hair and gently combs it loose from the gelled back style he wears it in, and Illya gives him another sip of scotch and Napoleon realizes he's never felt safer. They should talk this out, negotiate. He doesn't care.

Napoleon is just  _ so _ ...sweet like this. Maybe even alluring, though the pheromones are not his fault. They need to talk about this, but the only way Illya can think to phrase it is, “You won't be going  _ out  _ for your heat this time.”

This, he does not phrase like a question.

“Illya,” Gaby snaps, instantly annoyed. “You're not his father.”

Illya growls, sighs, rallies. Tries again. “ _ Will you _ ...stay with us? I can leave if you'd prefer Gaby, or she can… I just...I will follow you if you try to go—”

“Kuryakin,” Gaby says, fed up. He  _ began _ well…

“Not like it isn’t your fault,” Napoleon says, but he’s too tired to fight it, or to fight about it. “My body already feels like I’ve run a marathon, or  _ rolled _ one. Both of you relax. I’m not going anywhere.”

Napoleon reaches out, thinking Illya will stop stumbling over himself if Napoleon just agrees, so he does, managing to get his—now much warmer—hand cupped around the back of Illya’s neck to draw him forward, pulling him into a kiss over the edge of the tub. 

Illya’s breath hitches when Napoleon kisses him—really kisses him like that. He leans in, practically jumping into the bath himself. Napoleon tastes like scotch and all the things the alpha part of him craves, and his smile, though weary, is still stressfully dazzling.

“I don’t want anyone to leave. I’d be an idiot to set you two apart when you’re clearly so good together.”

Gaby kisses Napoleon’s neck. “But it isn't about us. It's about you, love. We would both be glad to be here for you, but we don’t need to be.”

No one had said the word  _ heat _ yet, but they all knew what they were talking about.

“Then, we'll all stay,” Napoleon agrees, and he's relieved, because after all this he feels acutely vulnerable. It's not a feeling he likes, and if he weren’t sore, he and Illya might work it out in a spar, until Napoleon felt solid and assured again.

After, maybe. For now, he trusts them, as novel as that is for a spy amongst other spies. Then again it wasn't as if he started spilling American military secrets when he was in heat; maybe slightly excessive affectionate platitudes.

As if sensing this, Illya seizes Napoleon’s hand and kisses it, and leans against the bath, running his hands through Gaby's hair.

“I'll run circles around you both,” Napoleon brags, earning a laugh from Gaby.

“That's exactly why you need both of us,” she says, humoring him. 

“Oh incidentally, if we two start fighting, do not worry: it is not over you, we do this all the time,” Illya teases. “Gaby, you will let me wash your hair?”

“I’m ready to get out,” Napoleon says, genuinely meaning it. “I want to sleep some before things really get going, and I’m more sore than I recall ever being.”

“I’d like you to wash my hair,” Gaby agrees, as she helps Napoleon stand up. “Will you be alright on your own, Solo?”

“For the duration of a decent shampoo, I suppose,” Napoleon says, reaching first for a towel, and then seeming somewhat at a loss as to what to do when there aren’t any pajamas waiting for him. He towels his hair instead, looking exhausted, as Gaby makes room for Illya to climb into the tub. “And I do expect you to do a proper job of it, Peril. A woman’s hair deserves appropriate consideration.”

“I will, I will just take care of you first,” Illya says, feeling torn as he helps Napoleon into bed. He understands in wanting to be in two places at once why monogamy is routine, even though he can't imagine his life without either of them. 

He tucks Napoleon into bed, and rummages through Napoleon’s clothes to set pajamas on the bed beside him. Then, as if to apologize for the mother-henning, and the leaving again, he pours Napoleon another finger of scotch. Napoleon still has a towel around his neck, and Illya pulls it up over his head to finish drying his hair affectionately. “You will be okay? I will leave the door open.”

He says this half so he can keep an eye on Napoleon, like he's worried he'll leave again.

From the bathroom, Gaby coughs expectantly.

“Illya,” Napoleon says, his gaze turning just a little sharp as Illya begins to fuss over his hair, over him. “I already said I’d stay.”

He leans up, kisses Illya gently because he’s enjoyed the novelty of doing that, and then very firmly turns the Russian by his hips and gives him a little shove toward the bathroom where Gaby is waiting. He can get his pajamas on himself, and the longer Illya stays fussing the less sleep he’ll get. 

“Will he survive?” Gaby wonders, lightly, only because she knows Napoleon is safe; that he’s given his word, and she trusts it, though she knows she shouldn’t. When it’s personal; when he gives his word to  _ them _ , she just has a feeling he’s going to keep it. 

Illya narrows his eyes. “Don't you start. You want the Russian stereotype back?”

He slides into the bath with her, which he obliges only because there's still some blood in his own hair from killing their way into the mafia den. 

“We should probably change hotels,” he says, finally, pouring soap into the palm of his hand and lathering it up. Now that Napoleon’s life is not in immediate danger, Illya’s mind can consider other problems, like how many people they just killed. He pauses to work some of the shampoo into her hair. “I should probably return receiver to phone so Waverly can call.”

“It will be better if we tell him what’s happening than if he sends one of his men in to make sure we’re alright any time in the next few days,” she agrees, tipping her head forward to bare her neck and make it easier for Illya to get to her hair; and it feels good. He has strong hands, and a confidence that she appreciates. “Napoleon might kill them himself if they walked in and needed an update before Waverly was satisfied.”

She sighs, relaxing, getting comfortable, her body gone loose. Under the water, she reaches back and curls her hand at Illya’s hip, rubbing her thumb over the small jut of his hipbone. “I’ll talk to him if you’d like.”

Illya sighs, relaxed by her offer and relaxed by her. “He does like you better.”

He's lost in the scrubbing motions he's using to work shampoo in at her scalp: gentle but thorough. She likes it when he pulls her hair sometimes, but he thinks it won't go over well now. “If we have to move, we should move tomorrow. Or tonight, if we think we can move him. The mafia may come after us.”

“I’m not sure how much of it we left,” Gaby says, “but you’re right. We should move. He could go into heat any second, and waiting only increases that.”

Illya shakes himself. “Sorry. All business. You relax, I will telephone Waverly to worry about this.”

“ _ I’ll _ talk to Waverly on the phone. You get our things together and get Napoleon to agree to changing locations now that he’s probably just gotten to sleep,” Gaby says, lightly. 

“I’ll carry him.” 

When Illya’s done, she sinks down under the water to rinse her hair, and then sighs out as she emerges, leaning back against his chest. “I’m glad he’s alright.”

“Me, too,” Illya agrees, kissing her hair before conditioning it for her. 

They get out of the bath quickly after, to find Napoleon, indeed, asleep in his silk pajamas. Illya sniffs the air and decides, yes, he smells like heat soon, and it threatens to cloud his judgement. Gaby notices it, too, and the phone call is swift, and they act quickly. 

Illya is packed and Gaby has pulled up the car just outside, below the window, so they can sneak out. It is then that Illya wakes Napoleon, prepared with a blanket to swaddle him in or smother him with depending on if he goes quietly or not. He runs fingers through his hair to wake him. “Cowboy? Cowboy, come on. We have to move. I've got you, Cowboy.”

“No, I already agreed  _ not _ to go anywhere,” Napoleon protests, his body going stiff and resistant to being moved. He’s  _ sore _ , and his muscles protest every motion. His mind is already starting to go cloudy and slow with heat. When Illya seems insistent on moving him, Napoleon  _ growls _ at him, but he at least starts to move somewhat under his own power. He accepts the blanket, though it’s undignified, and pauses only to try and stretch some of the stiffness out of his muscles. 

“I know, I know, I meant  _ without  _ us,” Illya says, slipping Napoleon's shoes on for him and helping him to the window.

“You’re alright, we aren’t going far,” Gaby promises. “Someplace we haven’t been to lie low for a couple of days.”

Napoleon rallies enough gives her a look, and she answers it with one of her own, and he relents, leaning on Illya. “It’s because you weren’t subtle.”

“I never am,” Illya says, and hoists Napoleon into his arms so he can lower him down into the car.


	2. Chapter 2

The car ride is short, and they hide the vehicle in a barn before shuffling into a house. It's dark, and they keep most of the lights off, but there is a sizeable bed that will fit them all. Illya hopes Gaby didn't request such a thing, but he wants even less for Waverly to have sent them here because of it.

Illya delivers Napoleon bed to bed, and kisses him gratefully.  As he moves to depart, Napoleon’s hand lances out to catch hold of his lapels, hanging onto him, trying to keep him from going too far.

“Stay,” Napoleon requests. “Both of you. Sleep. Be here when I wake up?”

“Of course we will be,” Gaby says, changing into her pajamas, tagging Illya out with contact, reassuring Napoleon by being near him. “Right here, right where you need us. As if we could resist.”

It pangs him, Illya realizes, seeing his often infuriating partner so vulnerable. But also Napoleon is open, and in his openness reveals a particular desire for _him_ that Illya has never known anyone to feel before.

He squeezes Napoleon’s hand and kisses his brow, unable to say anything as profound as what Napoleon has just begged of him in that small voice.

“I'll check our perimeter,” he tells Gaby, extricating himself with care. When he's at the door he takes a moment to breathe: is this omega-pheromones clouding his judgment, or the way Cowboy always knows what to say to get what he wants, or the third more terrifying option—is he as in love with him as he is with Gaby?

He does check the perimeter, finds all the doors and windows solid, and returns to the bedroom, laying two loaded guns under the bed within reach of himself and Gaby. She has crawled into bed and bundled Napoleon into her arms, and Illya hears her whispering to him and rubbing the back of his neck.

Illya leaves again to return with a pitcher of water and glasses that he sets by the bed.

“Stop stalling and come to bed,” Gaby snaps, and Illya obediently slides in behind Napoleon, touching him gingerly at first until he feels how Napoleon yields to him. He's flushed, but shivers at Illya’ s touch, and the alpha knows what to do, curling around him and kissing his neck where Gaby’s fingers had been.

Napoleon sighs out, soft, slow; not a sound of impatience but one of relief instead. A sound like he has found security, and his body relaxes into it, all instinct. He is surrounded by alphas who are safe for him, who have proven they’ll protect him, and some hindbrain part of himself couldn’t be any more satisfied. Of course, the fact that he likes them factors in, also.

His body hurts and yet it is scraping every reserve he has inside of him together to throw him into this heat, and he would have been hard pressed to say whether he fell asleep or passed out. Either way, it left him practically marinating in their alpha pheromones, and his body got hotter between them; readier. Made itself pliant and wet and ready for them, until he woke again in the deepest part of the night, practically undone.

He actually begins to lift himself out of the bed, then, as if he could escape it; some last ditch effort to reclaim himself or his dignity, but Gaby stops him, pulling him down.

“What do you need?” she demands, as Napoleon meets her gaze with bleary, hazed over eyes and drips slick onto her legs, even through his silk pajamas.

“A change of clothes,” Napoleon manages to gasp.

“Don’t you think you’d better just take them off?”

“Come back to bed, Cowboy,” Illya murmurs, pawing Napoleon back between them, and when he smells the rush of slick, he opens an eye. It plants a sudden desire to do anything for Napoleon that he could possibly want. “What do you need?”

It’s the low sound of Illya’s voice pressed against the back of Napoleon’s neck, both their arms around him, make Napoleon want to press himself down against the bed and arch his back up, and the desire is so strong that Napoleon catches himself on the edge of submitting like he was a teenager again, though those years are muddy and incomprehensible in his mind. But they’re gentle with him, waiting, touching him softly over the expanse of his back, rubbing his skin in an unhurried manner that tries to call Napoleon back to himself.

To the years of culture he’s acquired; stolen, learned, it’s the same. They’re soft with him, they treat him like he’s still Napoleon and not like the raging hormones have transformed him. It’s both tender and sweet and _frustrating._ He sits up, and reaches for the water over Illya’s shoulder and drinks, long and slow, and it brings him back to himself because it’s cold and it cuts through the fog.

He _needs_ them. Has a want for them specifically, and not just anyone who he could ensnare. He tells himself, in the part of his thoughts where he still needs to tell himself anything, that it’s because he’s been so close to them for so long. Not just in this bed with them for probably two days, but close, working together. It was bound to do things to the part of him that was omega.

“I need you not to be gentle with me,” he says at last, cutting a look toward Illya. “You’re alphas, let—"

Gaby puts her arms around his middle and drags him back down, then, rough, taking the glass from him and pinning him to the mattress. “Like this?”

Napoleon closes his eyes, nods with his cheek against the sheets, and Gaby starts stripping him bare.

Illya sits up, hackles raising. Napoleon is pretty like this, Gaby prettier, predatory, and for the alpha part of him it was like Gaby and he were about to share a feast. The rest of him was even more excited, somehow, and he bent to wrap a hand around his throat and kiss him. “You never like the easy way with anything, do you, Cowboy?”

“Most of the time, I like easy. Professional, smooth,” Napoleon grunts as Gaby juggles him roughly out of his pajamas and throwing them onto the floor while Illya is glad to keep him pinned. “I could maintain that demeanor if you like…”

“Don’t you dare,” Gaby growls at him. “Let go, Napoleon.”

All Illya knows of Napoleon is smooth and professional. He wants to see _him_ beneath however many layers of that he has up.

He nods in agreement and tugs roughly on Napoleon’s hair, which earns him an obscene groan and a fresh rush of pheromones and slick that smell _actually_ divine. “You want us to wreck you, Cowboy? Eat you up? It will not be very pretty…”

“Yes,” Napoleon gasps, shifting anxiously, moving beneath the both of them to ease onto his hands and knees. “ _Yes_ , I want that.”

Gaby smiles at them both, benevolent and beautiful. She teases, “Where did those handcuffs get to?”

“Not that,” Napoleon says, a little more sternly. His wrists are still darkly bruised, vivid purple where he stretches them above his head, green and yellow at the edges. “You can hold me—”

“Only teasing,” Gaby shushes him, and Illya kisses him harder. There are places the Russian wants to see bruises on Napoleon, and his wrists are not one of them.

Napoleon arches when Gaby runs her hand down his back, soothing, pressing up into them, and loses the train of his thought, closing his eyes into it, stretching when she runs her nails along his sides with firm enough pressure to leave faint pink marks, practically presenting himself for it. She grins at Illya.

“Who’s going first?”

Illya sucks in a breath at the sight of Napoleon like this for them, stretched out and presenting, both like a porn star and like someone infinitely more real. You couldn't fake wanting something this bad.

“He has two holes,” Illya suggests, without really meaning to, and when Gaby laughs he has to blush and say, “Only teasing.”

“Hmm,” is the only answer Gaby gives, before she reaches down to finally get ahold of Napoleon’s cock, curling her hand around his hip and leaning over his back as she strokes him, feeling how warm he is, knowing how his body must be sore from his ordeal, and yet he can’t escape this, either. Gaby purrs, stroking his cock while he groans and grinds against her, before she finally glances at Illya, gesturing for him to move up closer to the headboard. She leans down, mouth against Napoleon’s ear.

“You want to make Illya feel good, too?” she breathes, and she feels the shudder go through Napoleon’s body. “To make it good for both of us? Can you do that?”

When Illya’s in place, Napoleon actually lifts himself onto his elbows without any further prompting, reaching for Illya, leaning to get his mouth over the closure of his boxers and leave a wet, hot circle with his mouth.

“No,” Illya says, half-tugging, half-petting Napoleon’s hair. “Better idea.”

Napoleon’s limbs are already too shaky for having only been in heat for a few hours, and Illya helps him to lie on his side, pinning him there with a rough hand when he whines, and slides Gaby in behind him, spooning him. Then Illya flips his body so his feet are tangled up in the headboard and his face is down by Napoleon's legs—he isn't _great_ at giving head (not as eager as he is to get his mouth on Napoleon's dripping hole), but it's not all that difficult when he's not staring down Gaby's alpha cock—and he gives it his best attempt.

Gasping, Napoleon has to take a minute to compose himself, to pull his scattered thoughts back to the task at hand, especially when Gaby’s long fingers start prying into him as she watches Illya over Napoleon’s shoulder.

The differences in their respective heights means Napoleon has to work for this, to stretch up to get more than just the tip of Illya’s cock into his mouth but he does, works for more than a taste, and licks Illya wet, first, trying to describe a sensation that echoes how good it feels  to have Illya’s mouth on him at last; softer than he would have expected.

Gaby gets two fingers into him and hooks them forward and Napoleon groans, body jerking as she teases him, feeling how loose and slick he is for them. She’s almost a little sad that biology put them here instead of frustration, but she’s sure they’ll find themselves here again eventually. Maybe _then_ she can bend him over a table.

For now, Napoleon is squirmy in heat, as they expected, but his movements are all aborted, weak after his ordeal. It's endearing where it might otherwise be frustrating, and Illya grabs his knees to hold him still while Gaby gets her free arm around his chest.

“Be good for us,” she purrs, still teasing him, pressing hot kisses to the back of his neck. “Be good and we'll take care of you.”

Illya echoes this by swallowing him down, getting some slick in his mouth, finally, and it tastes so good he moans for it. His brain is saying knot, knot, knot, but he's trying to ignore it so Gaby can have her turn. Still, “Are you ever going to fuck him?”

“I was enjoying watching you,” she answers, but supposes she _did_ just promise Napoleon that they’d take care of him.  She leans forward, kissing just behind Napoleon’s ear, stroking her fingertips lightly over his neck as he swallows around Illya’s cock. “Are you ready?”

His nod is small, but clear. She has to sink down a little; why couldn’t they all just be the same height? But then she gets her hands on his hips, and lifts one of his legs at the knee to make things easier and lines up, slides home amidst a rush of slick that makes the whole process far smoother than she expects. He takes her to the hilt, groaning, his nails clawing half-moon shapes in Illya’s thigh as he rides up and over her knot.

Napoleon's mouth feels good, but something changes when Gaby finally fucks into him: both of them get more primal and needy in their movements, how hard they suck, how desperate for cock they get. Illya’s body enjoys Napoleon’s fingernails in him more than he wants to admit, and now he can smell Gaby down here, and the fresh rush of slick, and he comes unexpectedly.

“Napoleon, darling, you had better swallow everything, my good boy,” Gaby instructs, and Illya groans again around the cock in his mouth.

He does his best, but it's far too much, too thick, and in any other instance he'd be caught dead before he swallowed at all. Except that this isn't just anyone. Napoleon makes an admirable go of it before he coughs and chokes, drawing back with heavy, sticky ropes of cum pursuing him as he gasps for breath. Gaby really grinds up into him, then, tilting her hips to pound sharp, shallow thrusts right where she knows he wants her.

Napoleon doesn't tip over into orgasm until her knot starts to catch on his hole, and then she finally slams home, and he's gone, his body clamping down hard on her cock until she's seeing stars. It leaves him a wreck, soft and still until he pulls at Illya, wanting his mouth, his nearness.

“Good, good Cowboy,” Illya says, swallowing him without difficulty, and his come almost tastes like his slick.

He flips again, kisses up Napoleon’s body and holds him while he squirms. There's gluey come all over his face, and Illya just looks at him for some time like this before kissing him tenderly, and rubbing the excess into his skin, back into his hair, because he wants his scent all over Napoleon.

“Mm,” Gaby says, because she is content with her knot in him, and wants to smell Illya on him, too. She and Illya comfort Napoleon together between them. “Be still, our good omega. We've got you. You're so good for us, aren't you? So pretty. You smell so nice.”

They pin Napoleon between them, soothing and comforting, but not releasing.

“If you're wise,” Napoleon pants, feeling heavy and full, but not _so_ heavy and full and content that he doesn't protest cum in his _hair,_ “You won't try that when I'm not in heat.”

He doesn't let go of Illya, though, leaning into him instead, breathing the scents of the three of them together, pressing his face into the curve of Illya’s neck as Gaby shifts enough to make him whimper and hiss, before she soothes him again.

“Or what, you'll bite us?” she wonders, playfully.

“Don't tease, I might just. I could pin you down and show you how it's done, you know,” Napoleon doesn't even open his eyes to make the threat.

“Aw,” Illya laughs, finding Napoleon amusing and sweet like this, and he cradles him and showers Russian pet names into his ear, which he also nibbles on, concluding with, “[I want to keep you.]”

He does, genuinely: wants to mess up his perfect hair every heat, wants Napoleon to wrestle him for dominance, wants Gaby to bring them both to heel, too. “You try to pin me like this, Cowboy, we see how you take two alpha cock at once.”

He reaches around then and uses some of the slick that's somehow everywhere to press into his asshole, opening him up for the possibility. “You know you want us both to knot you, don't you, мо́й хоро́ший?”

A low, hungry noise escapes Napoleon at the promise in Illya’s words, and he shifts, his body betraying him before he can even think to deny how badly he’d like to _try_. It will be a lot. Illya’s bigger than any average alpha; bigger even than Napoleon which wasn’t usually the case. Napoleon’s not sure something won’t tear, and yet the very thought has him pushing back against Illya’s fingers, shifting his hips.

“Oh,” Gaby sighs, “You should feel how he bears down when you offer him things he wants…”

“I will, after you,” Illya growls, sliding in close and kissing Napoleon roughly, stealing his breath from him. “I think it's something we could work for. Take the whole heat to just stretch him to take me.”

Napoleon’s already hard again, and Gaby gets her hand on his cock, stroking slowly. “Did you mean that? About showing us how it’s done? Would you fuck your alphas?”

She gasps, and Napoleon shifts, reaching back, pulling her leg forward at the knee so he can work his fingers into her. He sinks his teeth into Illya’s collarbone, too, as they all tease each other, waiting for Gaby’s knot to go down.

“All you have to do is ask,” he assures her.

“I'd like to see if you could,” Illya teased. “Make you work for it.”

“I can,” Napoleon says, all bluster.

Illya grins: he likes the challenge, the contest, and if Napoleon ever beat him in a fair fight he would submit to it gladly.

Gaby leans in to whisper in Napoleon’s ear: “You don't have to work _very_ hard before he'll roll over for you.”

Illya leans up over Napoleon to bite her shoulder in retaliation—hard enough to leave a mark.

“What about you?” Napoleon wonders, sinking his fingers deeper into her, feeling the way the swelling of her knot is finally going down. “Will you roll over for me?”

“Yes,” she says. “Later. Now is about you.”

“He's very coherent,” Illya comments. “I feel like we are not doing our job.”

She shifts, giving a small tug that leaves Napoleon groaning, getting free of him at last and pushing him toward Illya. “You were saying, about stretching?”

“And you were saying about rolling over?” Illya replies playfully, but he doesn't think she will actually roll over right there, onto her back and spreading her legs for Napoleon.

Illya gives her an almost betrayed look, which she grins at.

It's a good thing Illya wants nothing more than to bury his fingers into Napoleon’s asshole, using his own slick to ease the way, teasing him as he settles over Gaby, making a valiant effort.

“Napoleon didn’t put forth a single argument about who got to top first,” she tells Illya, and then sighs out as Napoleon eases into her; she’s almost as wet and ready for it as him, and he leans down, presses his face against her neck and lets his sighs loose there, rocking his hips slowly between Illya’s pressing fingers and into Gaby.

Gaby sighs, enjoying the heavy weight of both of them over her. Napoleon’s cock is not large, and it's almost a different kind of pleasure, a much gentler, less stressful one. It feels wonderful, and she kisses Napoleon gratefully for it, running her fingers through his hair and keeping him right where she wants him.

This, Napoleon sinks down into, letting his heat wash over him and pull his thoughts away. His first day has never been terribly intense, a point that usually works in his favor, but between Illya and Gaby it’s starting to feel like it’s going to be very intense, very quickly.

Illya kisses down Napoleon’s spine, murmuring soft encouragements—“Good, Cowboy, you're okay,  we've got you”—and then plunges his tongue into Napoleon’s hole. He tastes good, and when he works back up to loosen up his asshole there's so much slick everywhere he hardly notices except from how the pitch of Napoleon’s moans change. But Illya holds his hips still and continues to stretch him, working fingers inside and ignoring his own dick, for now. He'll have plenty of time to knot his Cowboy later. “Be good, Cowboy, we'll take care of you.”

In his opinion, Napoleon is being very good, reaching forward to curl his hand around Gaby’s cock and stroke gently as he fucks her, trying to keep his focus on making her feel good even when Illya is distracting him so thoroughly, dragging all of his attention away.

“Very good,” Gaby agrees, sounding a little breathless, tilting her hips until he was sliding just right inside her, and Napoleon leaned down against her back, pressing kisses and groans against her skin, before he started to shudder, his rhythm faltering as she clamped down on him, and his body let loose another gush of slick, as if encouraging Illya to claim him properly.

Illya makes an exclamation of surprise, tempted to drink all the slick down. But they’ll need it.

“Fuck,” he groans, sinking his teeth into the flesh of Napoleon’s ass to keep himself from burying his face in between his legs. “You better be careful, Cowboy, seeming so eager.”

But he’s smiling, and kisses and bites his way back up Napoleon’s spine. He wants to stretch him and fuck his ass, but this hole is ready and slick, and full of Gaby’s seed and ready for his. Biological impulse to knot his omega takes over, and he plunges into him.

This motion knocks Napoleon deeper into Gaby, and she moans and snaps her head back, nearly clocking Illya in the nose. He growls and grabs her hair, and bites the side of Napoleon’s neck to keep him still, and presses them both harder into the bed.

Napoleon arches his back, all need an instinct now, and Illya’s heavy enough that he really feels it; the weight and presence of him. They’re both so very  _a_ _lpha_ and  it’s almost overwhelming, especially with Illya’s teeth in his neck and his fingers clawing down into the sheets as they surround him, as his body works through the stimulus of _too much_ and into _yes_ and the wordless, instinctive demand for more.

When Gaby finally sags down with her own release, Napoleon’s body bears down again as he shudders, seeming just moments after his last, gripping onto Illya’s hard enough to startle them both, until Napoleon shoves back, trying to seat him deeper, to find a place where it wasn’t _too much, so much,_ and his voice finds, “Illya,” and settles there through a few repetitions like a  particularly effective swear.

He practically drowns in it, surrounded by both of them, and his body can’t decide whether to clamp down harder still on Illya or relax utterly, so instead he just deepens the arch of his back until it feels right, like he’s going to stay right here forever.

“Good, that’s good,” Gaby says, reaching behind her to dig her fingernails into Illya’s leg, and curling her fingers into Napoleon’s hair. The weight of them was only just bearable: what did she need air for?

But perhaps sensing her need, Illya lifts Napoleon by his hips until she can slide out from underneath them. She doesn’t go far, just turning over and welcoming Napoleon to her bosom, to a kiss. She grins up at Illya. “Haven’t you knotted him yet?”

“I was hoping to hear someone beg for it first,” Illya huffs, taking Napoleon deeper, his knot beginning to inflate past the tightness of his rim. He’s still gripping Napoleon by both hips to keep him still, and he bears down on them both again, while Gaby tugs on his hair.

“Please,” Napoleon manages, through gritted teeth, and the words ends in a hiss as his body struggles to accommodate Illya’s sizeable knot, allowing Gaby to comb through his hair, gone gummy with Illya’s earlier attentions. Gaby shushes him, tilting his chin up, drawing their mouths together to kiss him through the points where it’s too tight, even as slick and ready as he is.

“There’ll be even more before we’re done,” Gaby tells him, and Napoleon makes a hungry sound, but for now he just stays loose, lets his body be manipulated as Gaby smooths his grip free of the sheets and rubs lightly over his bruised wrists.

Napoleon reaches behind when she’s coaxed his fingers free to curl his hand over the back of Illya’s neck and hold him there. He feels good; unburdened at last. Like he’d needed both of them before he can let go like this and maybe that was true. After all this time together, it was—well, probably not _natural_ , but at least not completely unexpected.

Illya shudders, relaxing into this feeling as the flood of endorphins rushes through his body. His knot swelling inside his omega, and his alpha watching over both of them. It’s primal and yet alien, somehow (maybe because Illya has never felt this open and in love with the people he’s fucked before), and utterly perfect. He just wishes Napoleon hadn’t nearly gotten himself _killed_ to get here—the thought makes him bear down harder until Gaby gasps for breath and flicks his ear, and he relaxes again. He wraps an arm around each of them and lets his body go boneless. His bite turns into a kiss, and he sighs, content now.

Gaby smiled down at both of them—blissed out of their minds, much as she feels. The night is cool and she’s glad to have both of them on top of her, and she tosses a blanket over Illya, just to be sure. “Good, Napoleon. You’re good and you’re ours and you’re safe.”

He only rumbles his agreement, relaxing into and against the both of them until he’s practically asleep; those keyed up rest periods his body allows when he’s in heat.

She’s scrubbing the back of his neck with her fingernails, and kisses him between his eyes, which makes him blink at her sleepily. Illya she can’t quite reach, but she runs her fingers through his hair, surprisingly fine, and when he tucks a hand under the small of her back she lets him rest it there. The room reeks of Napoleon’s slick and the scent of Illya’s come and her own mingling, and she breathes deep, and for the time their bodies allow them to rest.


	3. Chapter 3

When he wakes, they tend him and tease again, and this time he’s less lucid and all instinct, and comfortable enough between them to surrender to that, to let them take charge at least until Illya is finally getting his plan into action and trying to stretch Napoleon onto both of them at the same time; it’s incredible. Too much. Almost _beyond_ too much, but Napoleon wants it, pressing his palms against the bed and gasping.

“Illya, Gaby, _please_ ,” he practically whines, hands fisted in the sheets and pulling them up from the edges.

“It’s just a knot,” Gaby assures him, as Illya tries to work into him, but it feels almost impossible, like there’s just not enough of him. “If Illya wasn’t so _big…_ ”

“I’m not big, he is too small,” Illya snaps in frustration (though that was laughable, really, as he’d never had an omega as big as Napoleon was, and that was a good portion of his appeal).

He was sweating with the combined effort of trying to fuck Napoleon and not fuck him too hard. “This is not going to work—we will try— _hush_!”

Napoleon protested loudly as Illya pulled out, and Illya grabbed him by the neck—gently, but very firmly—to pull him off of Gaby and pin him to the bed. “We’re going to fuck you, be _still_.”

He and Gaby looked at each other, a little wild-eyed and desperate, both of them hard as rocks. “You have to fuck his asshole, there’s no way he can take me.”

“Oh, now we’re comparing sizes, are we?” Gaby huffed.

Illya wanted to scream, but he counted to at least seven before he managed to ask with some degree of control, “Do you want an exact measurement or do you want to come?”

“I want the latter,” Napoleon huffed, shifting over, shoving Illya onto his back—he at least had an idea of where Illya was going with all this. They needed to reverse where they were, which Napoleon is fine with so long as it happens _soon._  He shoves himself down onto Illya roughly, digging his nails in.

“Ah, _stop_ , damn it, let Gaby have you first!” Illya protested, but he went ignored, and once Napoleon was sitting on his cock, well, he wasn’t about to remove him. He stopped him at his knot, though, holding him up.

Behind them both, Gaby sighs, supposing she’s already well and slick from her recent unceremonious exit, and she begins working into Napoleon, finding he’s already partially stretched, but she can feel where Illya’s moving inside Napoleon, shifting, lowering Napoleon onto him slowly, and she has to roll her hips into it until she can start to get her knot into him, patting his back as she does, tracing an idle pattern in the sweat there. “You okay?”

“Okay,” Napoleon repeats, gasping. “I can—”

“Slow!” Illya shouts, but Gaby shoves her hips forward and Napoleon gasps and grunts, and she sighs out as she shoves her knot in without any mercy, and Napoleon arches and sags, moving helplessly now that he’s truly impaled on both of them, sighing and gasping against Illya’s ear.

Illya can’t say he’s mad at his instructions being ignored, since so far they’re both fully sheathed with Napoleon gasping between them, the omega reduced to small, shuddering twitches and even smaller noises.

“Stop squirming,” Illya says, gentler this time, pulling them both against him, holding them still. He can feel his knot swelling, straining in the confined space. It’s safer if they don’t try to move. He wants to wreck Napoleon, not _injure_ him.

Gaby gasps, digging her fingernails into Illya’s arms and her teeth into Napoleon’s shoulder as she tries to hold still, grunting with the effort.

“Okay, it’s okay, we are all okay,” Illya hums, his voice rumbling through all their bodies at once as they stretch him open and knot him.

Napoleon’s body feels like it can’t possibly accommodate this, stretched until he can feel every border of himself, until it feels like he’s bleeding into both of them. He gasps, then, as they both near full, and shifts forward, but there’s no moving and Illya stills him until his body finally adjusts and then he sighs out, whimpering. It almost feels like he has no room for his _lungs_ to expand.

“Good,” Gaby says, and “shh, hold on. You’re there.”

If Napoleon hadn’t ever understood the expression ‘seeing stars’ before, he did now, fully claimed by both his alphas.

“Shh, ма́ленький,” Illya says, tucking Napoleon safe against his neck and giving Gaby his thumb to suck on so she’ll stop biting Napoleon, worried that their Cowboy is dealing with enough already. “Shh, мо́й хоро́ший, моя́ хоро́шая.”

Gaby lifts her head, kissing his hand instead. “There’s nothing _little_ about Napoleon. And nothing good about me.”

Illya hums a gentle laugh. “Not even Russian is safe now.”

Then he and Gaby groan, shifting slightly, as their knots both _continue_ to expand.

“Alright, here we go,” Gaby grunts, trying to kiss Napoleon’s neck rather than thrust into him like she wants to.

“Relax, Cowboy. You can take it. You can take it. Be still.” Illya also runs his hands over Napoleon’s arms, through his hair, to comfort him. It’s painful for them, too, at first, but their knots shape to his body and to each other as they come, flooding his insides.

Only then they can relax, their endorphins telling them to settle just like this, Gaby and Illya soothing their omega between them.

Napoleon just rubs his face on Illya’s skin, reduced to nothing but sensation and low, approving mutters. He’s done a lot, he’s been a lot of places and considers himself experienced. Normally,  he leads the way, spends the time to do the job of seduction. Here, he doesn’t have to. They’re surprisingly dedicated to each other, and it feels less like an intrusion to be between them than Napoleon expected.

They want each other, but they also want _him_.

He mutters something unintelligible and shifts, but he can barely move. Gaby can feel how wet he is, all their scents and cum mixed together in way that’s currently satisfying all of her instincts, but she expects it will be messy shortly.

“I think after this we should all consider a nice long soak in the tub,” she sighs against the warm skin of Napoleon’s back. “Can you manage that, Solo?”

“You know me too well,” Napoleon mutters, as she further dishevels his hair, shifting her hips in tiny motions until he hisses and reaches back to stop her. “As long as you both will come with me.”

“Ah, stop this,” Illya barks, slapping Gaby’s thigh as everyone tenses up again. When she stills, he wraps a hand around the back of Napoleon’s skull and holds him and kisses his hair until he relaxes again.

“We don't know if there is a bath here,” Illya points out. “But I will check.”

Napoleon is positively shuddering between them, whether from arousal, exhaustion, or pain he can't quite tell. But all he can do right now for him is hold him and protect him and try not to move too much.

“You alright, Cowboy? It's not too much?”

“It doesn’t hurt, it’s just— _a lot_ ,” Napoleon reassures him. Yet it was so much that even his instinct-driven body seems to be so satisfied that he has no desire to go or be anywhere else until they were done with him. He’s not sure he’s ever really hit his limit before, and his body is certainly warning him not to push any further. He turns his head and kisses Illya to reassure him, and half to claim him in return. “Like I can barely breathe. There’s so much of you.”

It's more fact and less flattery, and only half his doing, but it stokes Illya’s ego anyway to hear, and he kisses Napoleon slowly and comfortably. It's a kiss of winter hibernation, like they'll never have to move again, and Napoleon smells so good Illya hopes they'll both forget about any bath. But he promises, “We'll take care of you.”

Napoleon eases out a breath slowly, and then practically whimpers as Gaby’s knot starts to go down, changing the sensation again, even though it’s lessening the pressure, it’s still rubbing against everything inside of him as it struggles to return to original shape, and she makes a very satisfied sigh as the pressure easing off means she finishes emptying herself out into him.

“Easy, easy, I'm here,” she promises, kissing that vulnerable spot between his shoulder blades as she pulls out. “You'll have to wait a bit longer on Illya. At some point his stamina stops being fun.”

Illya glares, but Gaby winks and slaps Napoleon’s ass sharply, suddenly. “Tighten that ass back up, don't need you leaking everywhere.”

“Gaby!” Illya shouts as Napoleon clenches around him, and his knot seems to finish expanding where it couldn't quite before.

“Ah,” Napoleon pants out, clawing the sheets again, but when he catches his breath it’s better. A little, at least. He finally feels like he can catch his breath, and he sits up some to stretch out, heedless of the rush of slick and alpha seed that drips out of him. It’s certainly a mess, and he feels a mess. At this particular moment, he loves it.

“Alright, Cowboy?” Illya asks, rubbing up and down his thighs. He seems unsteady, eyes fever-wild, and Illya feels a need to support him.

“She’s a handful, isn’t she?” he wonders to Illya, as he stretches his back out, feeling the burn in his thighs and lower back and trying to  ease some of it out. “You like it when she bends you in half.”

“I do. But you nearly died, and we—” Illya stops himself from saying something disastrous and corrects to, “need to...be careful.”

“You worried him,” Gaby said, sliding behind Napoleon to support his weight where he sits on Illya’s knot, which is as stubborn as he is.

He leans back against her. “I am what I am. It’s bound to be worrisome sometimes. I’ve survived this long, anyway.”

“You’re not _that_ old,” Illya teases.

“What he means is, you don’t have to do things alone anymore,” Gaby tells him. “You have backup, now. We’ll work with you.”

“I have my methods,” Napoleon sighs. “Don’t expect this to change _everything_. Just some things.”

He opens his eyes and glances down at Illya. “Only because the sex was really good.”

Illya huffs and rolls his eyes, but slides his hands up Napoleon’s warm thighs and squeezes them. “We need to work harder, if you’re not tired out yet.”

Illya hums, and idly strokes his thumb up the underside of Napoleon’s cock. He can’t move, and Gaby wraps her arms around him to keep his arms by his sides.

“You can work all you like,” Napoleon purrs, letting Gaby take control of his arms—he’s fairly certain he can fight his way free if he has to. He doesn’t _want_ to, and that makes the difference, even as he rolls his hips a little and sighs.

“You’re one of those infuriating omegas that gets all chipper and invigorated, aren’t you?” Gaby realizes. “Wear out your alpha and go on your merry way.”

“I always put it that I can still cook breakfast,” Napoleon confirms, rolling his hips to Illya’s slow, coaxing pace.

Now Illya pulls his hand off Napoleon’s cock with a grin that is unreserved only because it is mostly cruel. “Ah, so if we _don’t_ tire you out, we still get breakfast? Maybe we should quit while we are ahead, Gaby.”

Napoleon twitches in her arms, and she holds him tighter. He still feels cool enough that she wants to warm him up. “What, straight to bed, covered in come and slick? Oh, he won’t like that.”

“But we do,” Illya hums. He isn’t bluffing for his part: smelling their mingled scents on Napoleon’s skin is intoxicating—he wants to keep breathing it in until he gets light-headed from it.

“You're more likely to wear yourselves out,” Napoleon taunts, but there's not much threat in it, with Illya denying him even this. His body is still desperate enough for their touch that he submits even to the threat of sleeping in the mess. “No, I want a wash. Fresh sheets. It will keep our scents private, where they belong.”

Illya rumbles a complaint, touching Napoleon’s cock again, a slow tease, not enough to make him come, but enough to make him sweat.

“We’ll get you a wash, Cowboy,” he promises, while Gaby still holds his hands. “Maybe we get you a little dirtier first.”

“Amenable, if your knot ever goes down…” Napoleon groans, as Gaby chuckles.

“A very possessive adaptation for an alpha,” she agrees, holding onto Napoleon’s hands with one of her own and then reaching down to lightly tickle the insides of Illya’s thighs, now that she has him at her mercy, and pinned under Napoleon’s weight.

“I'm sorry it's, ah—that I'm—too big for you to handle,” Illya grunts, trying not to move too much, but Gaby knows just how ticklish he is, however unbecoming that is for a KGB agent.

“I hardly mind,” Napoleon sighs, leaning his head back against her shoulder as her attentions get Illya squirming and Napoleon starts to ride up toward another orgasm under all the stimulus.

Finally, impatient, Illya works his fist over Napoleon’s cock and feels him begin to shudder apart, milking the last of his knot as Napoleon comes, and Illya’s knot starts to go down. “That's it, good Cowboy.”

“Good, beautiful omega,” Gaby purrs, kissing his neck and still holding Napoleon still as Illya smears his watery come all over his cock and belly. Napoleon smells good now, she can't but agree, that smell of sated heat and pleased alpha. “You ready for that bath? We can ask Illya to go find one.”

“Oh, we can, can we?” Illya groans, lifting Napoleon off his lap and settling him into Gaby’s arms. He still looks cold, so Illya throws a blanket over both of them before getting to his feet.

“We're just going to dirty you up again, you know,” he calls, when he finds an enormous bath sunk into the floor. It's definitely large enough for the three of them.

“Won’t that be more satisfying with a clean slate?” Napoleon calls back, slowly hoisting himself out of bed. He pauses to give Gaby a grateful kiss, hesitating only an instant as his knees buckle a little once he’s standing. She and he exchange wry looks, and he rolls his shoulders in a shrug. “It’s not very far to go.”

“Illya can carry you back to bed,” she says, grinning at him. “He’ll be pleased to know he fucked you so hard you’re unable to walk.”

The way she says it makes Napoleon deeply suspicious that she feels similarly.

“You’re still chilled,” Illya says when he appears, slinging Napoleon’s robe around his shoulders. “The bath will take some time to fill, so I brought food. Are you alright?”

“Illya, your concern is touching,” Napoleon assures him. “But I won’t crumple.”

Illya eyes him skeptically, but lets him walk to the bathroom with his and Gaby’s arms around him.

Heat takes a lot out of omegas and alphas both, but Illya didn’t have time or the energy to make his mother’s borscht, so they’ll have to make do with bread and cheese and grapes, which Illya has made an effort to arrange artfully on a low table in the surprisingly palatial water closet.

Gaby grins at the sight of the spread, and wraps an arm around Illya, tugging him down into a kiss. “Look how sweet you are.”

Illya feels like a very well-behaved puppy when she talks to him like that, and he has to pretend to be bothered by it.

“I hope you’re joining us,” Napoleon says, settling down on the edge of the bath in his robe, after a pause to thoroughly wash his hands before reaching to avail himself of the feast for three Illya’s thoughtfully laid out for them. He holds out his hand with a grape extended, and Gaby laughs at him.

“Like a painting of Baccus,” she observes.

“Are you telling me Illya doesn’t deserve to be cradled in our laps and fed dainty morsels?” Napoleon says. “Don’t worry, I’ll expect the favor repaid, eventually.”

“We should be feeding _you_ , now,” Illya says, but he leans in to snatch the grape with his teeth before Gaby can. He grins, almost playful, but skips away to adjust the temperature of the water to run hotter. The water is still low, but he suggests, “We can eat in the bath.”

Napoleon slides a piece of cheese into his mouth, appreciatively, and then pulls his robe off to slide easily into the bath with a contented sigh, that gives way to a hiss as the hot water touches his more sensitive parts.

Gaby more or less jumps in with a great splash, pleased with the way her companions squeak, and then she settles down and gets comfortable against Napoleon’s shoulder, offering him some food.

“To think I was fixing engines in coveralls not so long ago,” she says. “Who thought I was destined for such decadence?”

“Capitalist indulgence,” Illya murmurs, still grinning. It feels good to have Gaby and Napoleon relaxing and well-fed and warm and _here_. Also, he is hungry himself, and begins shoveling food into his mouth.

Gaby laughs, and she tucks in, too, though she brings the food closer so Napoleon doesn’t have to reach behind him. They eat in silence for a solid ten minutes, until the food is almost gone, and Illya and Gaby move to urging Napoleon to eat the last of the bread and cheese. It’s mostly hormonal, they know, but they don’t stop themselves, and Napoleon humors them at least a little before they put the food aside.

By then, the water has filled to the top of the bath, and they can sink into it properly.

“Come here, you two,” Illya says, opening his arms.

Napoleon goes willingly, and Gaby pauses only to properly wash her face with clean water now that she’s finished eating, and they all settle in together, fed and sated. It might not be this way every time, but this time they have each other, and they work together well.

Illya relaxes in a way that’s more complete when Gaby and Napoleon settle in his arms. It’s more than alpha pride at having two conquests under his arms, because he feels safe in their hold, too. Safe, loved, and a multitude of other things he can’t say. He likes it.

Even the threat of Siberia, should he ever be discovered like this, seems distant now, not really a concern.

“I think every omega should have two alphas, it’s  so much more efficient,” Napoleon sighs, stretching out under the water and letting his body relax completely. It would be a while before their intermingled scents faded from his skin, even with the bath, but he hardly minded. “But now what on earth are we going to do about our mission?”

“I think we’re giving Waverly plenty of time to come up with a new plan,” Gaby says lightly. It’s hard to care, even though they may have just made their job much, much harder.

“Clearly, all you have to do is get yourself into big trouble, and we take care of problem,” Illya says, also joking.

“It’s your turn to get into big trouble next time, I think,” Napoleon says. “If we all want to keep on even footing, that is.”

He leans over and presses a kiss to the side of Illya’s neck. “And after that, Gaby’s turn again.”

“Again? I never get in trouble,” she huffs, sinking down under the water to wet her hair. “I’d hardly call the Vinciguerra thing ‘trouble’ any more than you two—”

But Napoleon and Illya are laughing at her.

“No one gets into trouble,” Illya declares firmly, as though he can make it true. He leans his head back, then rolls his head to kiss Napoleon’s hair, then Gaby’s. “Anyway, last mission _I_ was shot, so it’s definitely Gaby’s turn.”

“You brute!” Gaby laughs, and elbows him firmly in the ribs.

“Shh, we all know you like to be in Peril,” Napoleon adds, wryly, drowning his smile against a glass of cold water he pulls from the low table as Gaby groans audibly. She puts her hand under the glass and tilts up to splash water on his face in retaliation, and then it rapidly devolves into a wrestling match in Illya’s lap.

“Ooh, Cowboy! You’re terrible!” Illya laughs, and shouts and tries to cover his face, but they’re each sitting on his arms, so they’re giggling and splashing _him_ , until someone moves their knee in just the wrong spot and—

“Augh!” Illya cries out, at a sharp pain in his leg.

Gaby laughs again at first: “Oh, sorry, did I kick you in the—”

“The _leg_ ,” he hisses through gritted teeth.

Napoleon lifts her gently away from Illya’s leg, and then they both start fussing, Napoleon reaching down to be sure nothing was permanently damaged, and Gaby apologizing and her hands helping, touches gentle and clinical.

“Ah, ah, нет, stop,” Illya groans, swatting them away once he has control of his limbs. “Is fine. Fine. Just.”

It doesn’t hurt to walk anymore, but a direct strike on the knotted scar on his thigh is still a cause for some alarm, apparently. But it fades quickly.

“I think he’s whole,” Napoleon decides, when Illya’s caught his breath and looks like the worst of the agony has past. “Still, you should probably kiss it better.”

“Don’t, is all right,” Illya insists, but Napoleon is lifting his leg out of the water, threatening to tip him backwards, and he can’t get his footing, but Gaby grabs the back of his neck and kisses him.

“Is that better?” she asks.

“...Maybe another, just to be sure.” Illya doesn’t know when he’s gotten so playful. Part of him is embarrassed by himself.

Napoleon kisses the mark on his thigh, just above the water line, and then releases Illya’s leg again. “I feel better.”

Gaby laughs. “You’re supposed to, you just finished your heat.”

“I hope it was fulfilling for you two,” Napoleon grouses, good-naturedly. “It’s certainly your _fault_. I haven’t gone into one I wasn’t expecting in years. Alpha hormones everywhere.”

“Fine, fine,” Illya says, grinning. “Gaby and I will just have to cuddle by ourselves. Since Cowboy can’t control himself around us.”

Gaby dunks him, and pulls Napoleon into her arms. Her make up is smeared, darkening her eyes, but she’s still beautiful, and still, always, a little scary, despite her size.

“We all know that’s not true,” Napoleon says. “I could lay on the couch my whole heat and just stare at you until the pair of you went crazy.”

She kisses Napoleon almost possessively. “Someday I will call your bluff, Solo. I think it will be easier if you just get used to it, hm?”

“The voice of reason,” Napoleon says, settling his arms around her waist and leaning back against Illya’s side. “As always. I suppose I could get used to it. As long as there’s always a nice bath like this afterwards.”

“If not, I’m sure Illya volunteers to lick every inch of your body clean,” Gaby teases, to which both men make a face of distaste. She laughs. “Come on, Peril, how’s your leg? Can we put our Cowboy to bed?”

“I’m fine,” he says immediately, and she remembers never to ask him about this sort of thing. But he seems actually fine, too, and they dry off and share the burden in drying Napoleon off and bundling him into his bathrobe again. When Illya scoops Napoleon into his arms, he doesn’t argue.

“It _was_ fulfilling for me,” Illya says, when they’ve changed the sheets and they’re tucked into bed on either side of Napoleon. It seems like a non sequitur until they remember where the conversation was headed earlier. Illya isn’t slow, but he is thoughtful, and it’s clear that this one had been niggling at the back of his mind. “Not just—helping out with heat. Not just—rescuing partner.”

Napoleon and Gaby are staring at him, and he falters and stalls out.

Napoleon decides, primly, “Good.”

He presses a sound kiss against Illya’s mouth, and then yawns. “I’ll take care of breakfast in the morning when you’re both sore from all that exercise.”

“I won’t be,” Illya mumbles, but he sounds more petulant than anything.

“You’re a dear,” Gaby said, to both of them probably, and she kisses Illya too before settling down with her cheek cradled against Napoleon’s chest. Napoleon buries himself under the blankets between them.

Illya rolls onto his side so he can throw an arm and a leg over Napoleon, but his limbs are long enough he covers Gaby, too, and he squeezes them to draw them even closer. He’s not sure what to say, so he tucks his face against Napoleon’s neck and hums contentedly. Sleep finds him almost immediately.

...

Illya wakes with Gaby in his arms, and for several moments he can't remember why that's cause for alarm. But Gaby is warm and pliable as a kitten, and he nuzzles closer, sighing in delight. Then,

_ Napoleon _ . 

Had he phased right through them? Illya starts up, looking around them, but their wayward Cowboy isn't to be found in this bed. Illya launches himself out of bed, not bothering with clothes or a robe, and runs through the house before anything like logic catches up with his alpha brain. 

“Illya!” Gaby calls behind him, just as Illya skids into the kitchen. 

There Napoleon is dressed in robe, slacks, and slippers, and his hair is brushed and he's—

“You're making breakfast,” Illya says, feeling stupid. And naked. He holds up a finger and retreats again.

Napoleon quirks one of his eyebrows at Illya, and watches him leave before he flips the crepe he’s currently attending over to brown on the other side. 

Gaby makes it out before Illya returns again, and pulls Napoleon down for a peck on the cheek, smiling at him brightly. 

“What do you put on yours?” she asks, peeking into the pan. “I hope chocolate.”

“Smells good,” Illya comments, returning more sheepish, and with more clothes. He stands at the door, thinking about trying to explain his earlier outburst, and then decides against it, entering and wrapping his arms around Gaby and Napoleon both. 

He pitches his voice to a whine, like he’s young and impatient. “Is it  _ done  _ yet?” 

Gaby joins in, tugging on Napoleon’s apron strings. “Yes, we’re hungry!” 

“You could have kept sleeping until it was,” Napoleon deflects, casually and calmly. “You can’t rush perfection.”

He disengages the pair of them, shoving them toward the table. Warm chocolate sauce is set in a little pitcher in the center, and strawberries, and what looks like whipped cream, all of it artfully arranged. Finally he serves hot crepes onto all three plates, and settles in at the table with them.

“Now, you may eat,” Napoleon allows, as if they weren’t already digging in. 

“Mm,” Gaby says: she eats least daintily of all of them, smearing chocolate all over her face and wolfing down huge bites that fill her cheeks. 

“Napoleon,” Illya says, and it’s serious because he actually uses Napoleon’s name, “it’s  _ good _ .” 

They are hungry, so they eat otherwise in silence until the stack of crepes is gone and Gaby is finishing off the chocolate with a spoon. 

“That was better than the sex, somehow,” Gaby says with a straight face until Illya wipes some chocolate on her nose. 

“That’s because cooking is an art, and sex is a science,” Napoleon theorizes. He looks quite full and satisfied, but moreso with their praise for his cooking than the actual food. 

“Wouldn’t you put that the other way around?” Gaby asks, wiping her face on a napkin and scowling at Napoleon.

“Certainly not,” he says. “It doesn’t mean it wasn’t enjoyable.”

Illya lays his hand over Napoleon’s. “For me, as well. So. Ah. When this happens again, you will—” 

Gaby raises an eyebrow at him. 

“ _ Will _ you,” he amends to a question, “rely on us?”

“Or in between,” Gaby adds. “What he’s trying to say, is if you want to share our bed, we will have space for you.” 

They wait, tensely, but trying not to show it.  

Napoleon leans primly with his elbow on the table and his thumb under his chin, as if appraising both of them for worth like he might a complicated piece of jewelry, eyes half-lidded as he holds the hand of his emotions close to his chest. 

“I do want to,” he says, at last, and their relief is almost tangible. “But I’m not promising exclusivity. It’s better if you don’t ask me to. Will you be alright with that?”

“Certainly,” Gaby says, though she doesn’t actually sound entirely certain. 

Illya scowls darkly and looks down. 

This seems like it might be all his contribution, but he eventually looks up again. “Is not your heats I wish to possess. I am content with what I have.”

He takes Gaby’s hand under the table, and they give each other a significant look, and nod, before turning a look with a similar gravity back on Napoleon. 

“If you could not fuck so many dangerous people, though, we’d be grateful,” Gaby says curtly. “That’s coming from your  _ work partner _ , not your  _ alpha _ .” 

Napoleon smiles at her, curling his fist in front of his mouth briefly as if in attempt to restrain his observations on that particular request. Finally, he cuts a significant look at Illya. “Only specific dangerous people, I suppose?”

Illya rolls his eyes. “Dangerous to the  _ mission _ , Cowboy. Anyway, Gaby is not  _ very  _ dangerous.” 

Gaby huffs and thunks him in the chest, but ignores him.

“And if you don’t mind...helping to maintain our cover, still?” she asks Napoleon, attempting delicacy but mostly blurting it out. 

“I’m pleased to,” Napoleon assures her, and this time his smile is closer to genuine. “It’s hardly a cover so much as it once was, anyway. There’s an  _ element _ of truth, and that always makes the most convincing lie. Besides, if the two of you had to go back to the way it used to be, it would be just as bad for me.”

“You could have helped us sooner, you know,” Gaby points out.

“I tried. I hinted, cajoled…” Napoleon trails off with a grin. “Alphas are notoriously stubborn and you two are outstanding examples of the stereotype.”

And Napoleon is more conniving and flirtatious than any omega they’ve ever met, but neither of them say it, though Illya and Gaby seem to think it at each other in the slight grin they share. They do want him back in their bed, after all. 

After a pause, he adds, “And I wouldn’t change you for the world. So, the short answer is yes.”

“Nor would we change you, Cowboy. Not as much fun to catch if you don’t make us chase you,” he grins, and begins to clear dishes away. He scrubs them without prompting, and Gaby dries and puts them away. 


	4. Chapter 4

On the heels of their latest caper, it comes down from Waverly that their ‘success’ has earned them a little downtime. Though they had handled Napoleon’s last heat with hardly a mention of it, and Waverly is tactful, he seems to think they need some time to themselves for whatever personal matters they care to attend to.

“After all, we’re not animals,” he says, leaving them to it. “Just don’t get too comfortable. You’ll probably have a few days, but the nature of our work lends itself to a few surprises.”

Napoleon’s first stop is for clothing, unsurprisingly. What might surprise them is that he brings home a suit for Illya in his exact measurements that he apparently has gotten through some combination of cunning and a good eye for such things. 

“What is this for? I don’t need this,” Illya protests, and he is either worried that Napoleon is going to take him somewhere that fancy dress is required, or he’s beginning to realize how Gaby felt being dressed up like a doll.

“Come now, you got to dress  _ me  _ up,” Gaby says, cackling as she lounges on the bed. “Napoleon gets to have his turn.”

Illya glares. “But for  _ what _ .” 

“Don’t you want to look good?” Napoleon wonders. “I trust Gaby to pick her own clothes.”

Now it’s Gaby’s turn to tilt her head, considering their omega with a little more intensity and skepticism. “For  _ what _ , Solo?”

“We’re in Paris, don’t you want to eat the food? See the sights?” he prompts. It earns him only a blank stare. “I have talked us into the Palais Garnier to see the new ceiling. I can’t possibly steal it. Come along, won’t you? It’s not the sort of privilege that they just give away to the public.” 

“This just sounds like a challenge,” Gaby said.

“Or an alibi,” Illya added, and looked at the clothes. They were indeed very fine, very well-cut, and we're not, like with Gaby’s clothes, part of the mission. He touches them, and they are soft under his fingers. Light for the warmth of a Parisian night. They are also rather more form-fitting and less yielding than he would like. “This is not the Russian way.”

“If you’d like, you can go naked. Is that the Russian way?” Napoleon asks, sweetly. “Try it on once, see how you look. That’s all I ask. We finally have some time to ourselves where one of us isn’t recovering from injury, you know.”

“This doesn’t mean we need to…”  _ parade about like peacocks doing romantic things that might get us in trouble _ . But he can see how much Napoleon wants this. Illya is beginning to be able to see past that bright-eyed facade to see something occasionally wistful in Napoleon’s gaze. He sees that look in him now, and he knows he can’t ruin this, or just refuse. 

He sighs, shoulders drooping in resignation, fighting just enough that Napoleon can feel like he has won a victory. He takes the clothes and retreats to the washroom to dress. 

Gaby stands up and goes to Napoleon, wrapping her arms around him and pressing her chin to his chest as she looks up. “Well. It’s only  _ fair _ you pick something out for me to wear, too. I should get jealous you bought Illya clothes and not me...” 

“Who said I didn’t?” Napoleon reassures her, easing his arms around her shoulders and watching her pout at him. “I just said I trusted you to pick your own.”

He positions her carefully in a dancing position and leading her into a waltz before falling seamlessly in as she asserts control and leads instead. Slow and graceful and around in a circle before he nudges the door into the foyer open with his foot and reveals a hanging package from which several hangars protrude. “But if you have trouble choosing, Illya can help.”

Napoleon is a very good dancer, and Gaby likes dancing. She likes even more Napoleon bringing them pretty things. It’s a bit of a role reversal that just...works for them. 

“You’re sweet,” she says, pulling him down into a kiss. “I’m sure they’re all beautiful and there’s no way I could possibly choose.”

Then Illya comes out of the bathroom, and Gaby’s mouth actually drops. 

“It is too... _ decadent _ ,” he complains, fidgeting. Ostentatious. Capitalist. He feels awkward, like he stands out too much. He’s not on a mission dressed like this, it is just  _ him _ , and he feels wrong. 

“I counter that it’s just decadent enough,” Napoleon says, his eyes glued to the long, well-accented lines that Illya cuts in the suit. He reaches out to take Illya’s fidgeting hands, and leans up to kiss him. “If it makes you feel better, you can think of it as a mission.”

To his mortification, Illya finds himself blushing as their eyes rake over him. Napoleon’s kiss relaxes him only somewhat. “I still feel...is too much. How did you afford—” 

“Is it wrong that I almost just want to pull it all off him again?” Gaby laughs, cutting off that line of inquiry and going up on her tiptoes to kiss Illya’s cheek. “You look wonderful. You’ll make us both proud.”

This  _ does  _ help him relax. Even if no one can really know, he does want to reflect well on Gaby and Napoleon. And, well, if  _ they  _ like the look, it’s fine. He doesn’t. 

But he catches another glimpse of himself in the windowpane just to be sure. 

Gaby laughs, pretending not to see, and takes the wrapped packages into her room to change. 

“Hold that thought,” Napoleon instructs, before he too vanishes to put on an even finer suit; after all this wasn’t an everyday affair. Also, he could hear Gaby exclaiming over the jewelry in the next room, before she storms in just as he’s finishing up with his tie.

“You didn’t steal this, did you?” she demands, a sparkling bracelet in her hands that matches (Napoleon notices) the one she’s already wearing at her throat.

“Certainly not,” Napoleon says. “I bartered for it.”

Gaby, perhaps wisely, doesn’t ask for elaboration.

“Cowboy,” Illya growls, but he can’t exactly complain about the backless, high-necked gown Gaby is wearing. It makes her look like she goes on forever, even though he knows her height is finite. Nor can he complain about the the way that suit hugs Napoleon’s ass and his shoulders. 

Fuck, now all he wants to do is get them out of these clothes again. Is that the point of them? But Illya bites back his comments, determined to behave, for Napoleon. “So when do we go to this... _ palace _ ?” 

He doesn’t try to state their destination himself, because his French is atrocious, though he understands most of it (he’s better than Gaby, on the other hand, whose grasp of French is poor by design). It is good they don’t have a mission here, because they are not exactly the group for it. 

“The cab’s waiting for us downstairs,” Napoleon says, with a smile that offers them the world. He  _ smells _ fantastic, also; like his cologne was designed just for him, to work with his natural pheromones. It makes his smile very alluring when he gestures for them both to accompany him downstairs and into the waiting cab.

“The painter is Russian, you know,” Napoleon explains, leaning back as casually as he can in the cab as they travel the narrow Parisian streets. “I thought that might interest you.”

“There are Russian painters?” Gaby wonders, clearly to tease Illya.

“There are many,” Illya huffs, whether or not she is teasing, but this does pique his interest. “The painter of what? Are we going to a...gallery?” 

“Of sorts,” Napoleon says, remaining mysterious. 

Gaby’s hair has fallen in front of her eyes, and Illya wants to push it back, but he refrains from touching her in public. Instead, he brushes his fingers against Napoleon’s knee, the more socially acceptable form of physical contact. Gaby touches Napoleon’s hand, too, and it’s almost like he’s the conduit between them, allowing them to touch. 

_ He’s  _ not bad to touch, either, of course. And appropriately, he seems to understand to pass the gestures from one to the other, carefully arranging Gaby’s hair into artful loops that frame her face. 

The city is more beautiful the darker it gets (“[That’s because you see less of it,]” Gaby huffs, in German), and when Napoleon stops the driver, the place is jaw-droppingly gorgeous. It really  _ is _ a palace. Illya gapes—it’s not like Russia doesn’t have this architecture, or that he’s never seen anything like this but—but he’s never seen anything like  _ this _ . It’s so ostentatious. And he almost thinks he likes it. 

Napoleon loops his arm through Illya’s, and takes hold of Gaby’s hand as they walk up the steps where quite a crowd has gathered, and no one challenges their presence. At the door, Napoleon exchanges pleasantries in flawlessly spoken French with the guard and shows a couple of papers from his breast pocket, and then they are ushered inside, behind the velvet ropes, and Napoleon guides them expertly through the area behind the scenes of what is clearly some sort of performance hall. 

Distantly, the sounds of musicians warming up can be heard, and Napoleon thinks the flute is a little bit off as they make their way through the darkness and into the depths; then suddenly out into the light, a space secreted in some far corner of the opera house where the painting hangs suspended for a close look, before it’s hoisted to its final lofty position.

“For our eyes before any others,” Napoleon says, dramatically. “The new dome of the Palais Garnier.”

Gaby begins to pull back, hissing, “You brought us to the  _ opera _ ?” 

But Illya ignores her, letting Napoleon guide him forward, his eyes drawn upward, awed. “The ceiling. This is Russian?” 

“Yes, the cry went up for a more modernistic dome, though this painting will not replace the other; merely cover it,” Napoleon says. “The usage of color is certainly more celebratory than the dusty old classical version that was previous.”

“It’s…”  _ Not very Russian _ , he thinks, and means that in a good way: it’s bright and opulent. He’s still gawking upward like a fool, holding onto Napoleon for balance. “Beautiful.” 

“We’re going to be here for hours like this, Napoleon!” Gaby complains.

Napoleon turns toward Gaby. “It is an  _ operetta _ they’re warming up for.  _ Candide _ . In English. You’ll like it.”

“Gaby, look at it!” Illya says, animated unlike they had ever seen him before. He takes a leaflet about the art while Napoleon grabs glasses of champagne. The leaflet is in French but he stumbles through it. He doesn’t have to invent something of his homeland to admire like he did that first night with Gaby in Italy, no, it’s already  _ here _ . Napoleon could make him sit through several operas if he could stare at this the whole time. 

“Even Picasso himself has high praise for Chagall,” Napoleon agrees, hands tucked behind his back. He leans down to Gaby, deeply appreciative that he’d been able to flatter Illya’s patriotism to the point where he even forgot about the magnificent suit; making Illya as much a (very tall) piece of art as the painting he gazed up at. He whispers to Gaby, “shall I steal him one? Not this one, obviously.”

“Don’t you dare.” 

Gaby gives Napoleon a look that suggests she’s in no mood for his jokes, and Napoleon straightens up. “Here I would say is the spiritual successor to Matisse, except they were contemporaries until very recently.”

Illya absorbs all of this like he knows what any of it means, turning in circles as he looks up admiringly, and narrowly avoids bowling over a few people gazing up at it through expensive lorgnettes and one carrying champagne. 

“Maybe we should sit down?” Gaby suggests, her way of noting it would be more prudent for Napoleon to go after Illya. 

“Did you know he’s from Vitebsk?  _ That’s  _ where we should visit next, it’s lovely,” Illya explains.

“It sounds cold,” Napoleon says, but in good humor, “but in the spring, any place is lovelier.”

He gently collects Illya from his place of wonderment, and leads them up into their private seats in one of the boxes, arm-in-arm with both of them. He settles between them, and reaches out for them both, translating the squeeze of Gaby’s hand to Illya’s. Champagne is served to all three of them, and Napoleon thanks the server, tipping enough to be sure it will keep coming.

“How are we affording all of this?” Gaby hisses, but Illya’s still too awestruck to do much complaining. 

“I called in a few favors,” Napoleon assures her in an undertone. “Don’t worry about it. In my younger days I helped complete a few collections in Paris.”

Illya has returned to his more usual reserved, unflappable demeanor, and he isn’t indulging in too much champagne, but Napoleon and Gaby can tell how distracted he is, how open and relaxed. Gaby and Napoleon are here, and they are pretty, and everything is pretty, and it’s...overwhelming. He sits quietly, watching everything—but less analytically and more experientially than usual. 

Napoleon’s eyes keep slipping to his companions; to how  _ good _ they look all dressed and neatly made up. He’s always valued them, but something about this puts the covetousness in him that truly fine art does; his fingers twitch with a desire for possession, but he’s always been remarkably good at restraint, so he drinks champagne and watches the opera, sinking into the moment.

Illya is less impressed by the operetta itself, and Gaby, perhaps because she’s four glasses of champagne in, is enjoying it more than she expects she would. She sits slightly in front because she is the smallest, and Napoleon and Illya both enjoy watching her, if nothing else, the way her earrings swing when she bops her head to the music, the way she laughs and guzzles champagne. By intermission, no one would ever have suspected that she wasn’t thoroughly enjoying herself, but she also isn’t necessarily polite company. 

“Fast metabolism,” Illya explains to Napoleon with an annoyed but fond grin. “Intoxicated quickly; sobers quickly.” 

“I’m  _ not  _ intoxicated,” Gaby says, looking like her head is too heavy for her slender neck. Illya wants to kiss her, and is glad that he didn’t have enough champagne to actually do it. 

Napoleon pulls her gently into his lap, resting his chin on her shoulder, and his cheek against hers. “Tipsy, by the scent of it. Not drunk.”

“Bring me more and I’ll show you drunk,” Gaby promises.

“I hear you get violent and start fights.”

“True,” Illya hums.

“Not true!” Gaby protests. “Do you want a rematch?”

Napoleon chuckles at her, but he lets her go anyway, his body feeling rather warm from the alcohol as well. Warm in a good way, where the world has only just started to blur to brightness at the edges, and Illya looks so truly good in his suit that Napoleon at last folds. The opera is divine, but his alphas are…well. If they leave now, they’ll beat all the traffic.

He leans up into Illya’s ear. “I think we should take Gaby home.”

That he’s met with any protest at all is the greatest victory he could have had: Illya wants to look at the ceiling some more (and possibly, Napoleon gathers) fight some Parisian snobs who disdain the Russo-Jewish heritage of the artist (“They could be Nazis, Solo!”); Gaby mostly wants to see the end of the operetta, but also probably wants to help Illya fight the Parisian snobs (more, Napoleon guesses, because they are Parisians, and she wants a fight). 

He relents, of course. Napoleon’s policy of late has been to give them just about anything they like. With a long, heartfelt sigh, Napoleon herds them both out immediately after the opera, feeling a bit like the sheepdog forced to herd geese or very angry cats. 

“Let’s not fight, we’re wearing nice clothes,” he suggests, as cavalierly as he can. “And  _ I’d _ like to be the one to take them off of you, not some stranger you’re trading blows with.”

“She's in a feisty mood, Cowboy,” Illya comments, allowing himself to be led away and ushered into the cab almost pleasantly. By the end he's forgotten about the probable-assholes-but-unlikely-Nazis, and is interested, mainly, in getting out of these clothes, first, and getting Gaby and Napoleon out of their clothes, in whatever order they present themselves.

“Am not,” Gaby says, and slugs him in the gut where the can driver can't see, and he's still coughing when she palms his groin. 

“Be gentle,” Napoleon says, amused, attempting to pry her gently away until she socks him too—not quite as firmly as she had Illya, and he gives up his attempts to save Illya’s virtue. 

He gets them out of the cab; pays the fare, and gets them into the house again somehow, stumbling when Gaby trips him to get her hands on Illya first, throwing a wicked grin over her shoulder at Napoleon while she undoes Illya’s tie.

“Feisty,” Napoleon agrees, pulling the door shut behind them, and shaking his head.

“Are you going to help me, Cowboy, or am I going to have to climb Mount Kuryakin by myself?” she asks, though when Napoleon gets nearer she sways in between them, butting Napoleon out with a hip. If he wants it, he’ll have to work for it. 

And at one time Illya would have protested this—would have come up with any excuse so he doesn’t have to  _ feel  _ so much—but right now, with them, lightly buzzed and his cock already straining in his trousers, after a wonderful, beautiful evening, feelings don’t worry him. He even thinks he loves them, whatever he knows about love.

And he doesn’t mind one bit being  _ fought over _ . 

He gives Napoleon a nonplussed look and a shrug. Gaby does what she wants, and  _ he’s _ certainly not going to stop her. 

Napoleon arches his brows at her, and considers her mixed signals. Instead of trying to pry her off, instead he eases against her back, puts his hands around her hips and kisses the nape of her neck, running his hands over her body in slow encouragement before making brief, mischievous eye contact with Illya and hoisting her up between them so she’s closer to Illya’s height for one, bracing her up on his knee, both of them suspending her weight between them in a careful balance while Napoleon hikes her skirt up to get his hand underneath. With her feet off the ground it’s hard for her to turn on him, anyway.

Illya instinctively grabs her under the knees, pulling her legs around him, even if her shoes  _ hurt _ when she kicks, while Napoleon palms her through her underwear, teasing over her cock and then behind, clever fingers stroking over the fabric.

“If she bites you, I’m not sorry, Peril,” Napoleon huffs, as she shoves Illya’s jacket off his shoulders. The fabric bunches at his elbows until Illya deigns to help this go smoothly, holding her with one arm while he gets the jacket off the other. 

“Is all right, Cowboy, I am used to it,” Illya teases, and it’s so brazen that Gaby surges up against him and bites down just under his jaw—hard enough to leave a mark and high enough that it will show no matter what he wears tomorrow, which has him hissing and digging his fingernails into her thighs. 

Gaby laughs and reaches back to curl a hand in Napoleon’s hair, tugging until he bites her neck, too, and she gasps a little. “ _ Yes _ . There’s a good Cowboy. You like it when we dress up for you, don’t you, darling? You like dressing us up like your little playthings, hm? Tell me, how are we going to play with Illya tonight?” 

“You’re in command,” Napoleon assures her. “But I think we should ravish him until he forgets everything but Russian.”

Illya huffs at that, his boldness faltering somewhat as she unzips his trousers and gasps. 

“Illya! You’re not wearing any underwear?” She wriggles, and together she and Napoleon push him against the wall, getting his trousers entirely undone. 

Illya can only blush. “The trousers are too tight.” 

“A shame we didn’t know that while we were sitting in the box,” Napoleon purrs, “I’d have taken advantage.”

As it is, he eases his hand into Gaby’s underwear, one hand still around her waist to hold her steady between their braced up bodies, easing two fingers where she’s wettest and rubbing a teasing circle until she’s gasping and writhing. He hikes her skirt up further, but with her legs around Illya’s waist he’s limited to only teasing, and he’s content to drive her wild this way, leaning over her shoulder to kiss Illya.

Illya relaxes into it, feeling indulgent. It’s easy to hold Gaby, and easy to kiss Napoleon, easy to let the wall behind him support and ground him, even easier to let her undo the buttons of his shirt. He’s still enjoying kissing Napoleon when he suddenly he draws back, smiling, as an idea hits him. 

“You should stretch him out for me.”

“Who says I let you fuck him first?” Gaby growls, annoyed that his fingers have stopped. “I thought I was in command?” 

As though to prove this, she wriggles in Illya’s grasp and demands, “Illya, put me down!” 

She grins over her shoulder at Napoleon as the Russian obeys, and she kisses Illya’s chin. “Now on your knees, I want you to suck my cock.” 

Illya obeys without thinking about it, lifting her skirt and tuggings her panties out of the way to get her down his throat. Gaby curls a leg around his shoulder and glances at Napoleon, raising an eyebrow as if to say,  _ Your move _ . 

He knows enough moves to work with this, and he settles down to his knees, too. A slower motion, one that suggests he doesn’t stoop for just anyone; not even just any alpha, holding eye contact as long as he can before he shoves her balance over so that she’s bent forward some, so she can clutch to Illya’s shoulders when his mouth moves into place, a long slow lick to taste her first, and then, despite the awkward angle, he licks her open, tongue very clever at the base of her cock where Illya can’t reach, and plunging into her cunt.

In other circumstances, he might complain that he was the one still fully dressed, but he’d more or less accepted that things were going to play out at Gaby’s pace. It’s okay because even at this angle, he can still get his hand on Illya’s cock and stroke him hard, until he’s muffling gasps and groans with Gaby in his mouth. 

“Oh!” Gaby cries, scrambling to grab at both of their heads, but it’s hard with the gown, so she works the zipper and tugs it up over her head to drop it on the floor. “Mm, he’s dangerous, isn’t he, Illya? Just the way we l-like.” 

She stutters as Illya swallows her down and she feels their tongues  _ meet  _ in the middle of her, and she doesn’t mean to come so soon but she does, slamming down Illya’s throat until he practically chokes, fingers curling into their hair and swearing loudly. 

Illya grabs at her ankles, hips twitching as Napoleon touches him, but Gaby comes before he can return the favor. 

“Ah, that’s good,” she sighs, coming down, and scrambling off of them. She still has her shoes on, but slips her panties all the way off, and leaves her brasiere hanging on a doorknob as she walks down the narrow hall. She’s surprisingly steady for having been so drunk. “Well—I’m going to freshen up. Why don’t you two help each other out of your clothes and meet me in the bedroom?” 

Napoleon with eyes shining in the dim; they hadn’t even turned on the light yet. He considers Illya, and both their gazes go hard and predatory in the same instant. He’s calculating his advantage, circling like bulls circle before they charge, and Illya’s halfway out of his clothes with his legs tangled up in his pants, where Napoleon’s still mostly buttoned up. The instant passes while he wipes his mouth on the back of his hand, a somewhat prim gesture; more the aftermath of a fight.

He lunges, dropping his shoulder into Illya’s chest as they both start to grapple for whatever control they had left in the wake of Gaby’s command. Illya’s taller; he’s better at wrestling and holding and using Napoleon’s lower center of gravity to his advantage, but Napoleon fights dirty, gets his hand on Illya’s cock again to stroke short, firm pumps over his knot.

“How do you want it, Peril? It will be me first or her,” he says, in the instant before their mouths meet almost more like a bite than a kiss. 

Illya concedes the upper hand to Napoleon only because it takes all his mental faculties to deal with buttons right now, and there are too many of them, buttons all down Napoleon’s shirt and trousers, but finally he rips him free of his clothes, slowing only when Napoleon all but barks at him at what sounds like a straining seam. But then he kisses him again, and Illya locks his legs around Napoleon’s to flip them over and wedge him against the corner, and kiss him slowly and more affectionately now, one hand cupping his jaw and the other cupping his balls. 

When they part, he says, and though his lips aren’t actually turned up he’s giving Napoleon a shit-eating grin with his  _ eyes  _ somehow: “You first. You are smaller.” 

“It always comes down to a size contest with alphas,” Napoleon says, his tone warm and rough and pleased, even as he salvages back his suit pants—a shoe thumps somewhere, and he supposes the dry cleaning bill will be outrageous—and fishes a vial of clear oil free, working it onto his fingers even as he leans more tenderly into the kiss, and when he has one hand free, he curls it against Illya’s cheek. 

“You had this with you the whole time and you behaved?” Illya wonders, and now the grin has reached his mouth a little.

“I have some restraint, but I wanted very badly not to,” Napoleon presses his thumb against the forming bruise under his chin that Gaby left for him, it’s only as a distraction for how his fingers are pressing into Illya slowly, carefully. They’re always gentle with each other, here, in the moments where it matters. Where softness is allowed, and not a weakness.

Illya gasps and clutches at Napoleon as they kiss—in absence of clothes he grabs his bicep, and Illya’s hands are big but the American’s muscles fill them nicely, and it nearly makes him dizzy how perfect Napoleon is. How stupidly perfect. 

Their mouths break for air, and Napoleon looks up at Illya through his lashes. “You  _ did _ look good in the suit, you know.”

“Capitalist indulgence,” Illya replies automatically, but it’s more of a joke now, like he’s playing a caricature of a Russian. He digs his fingers in as Napoleon twitches his fingers inside him, teasing, and Illya needs something more to hold onto, so he reaches for his back, his ass, holding on for dear life, and moaning loudly. 

“Thank you,” he finally whispers, like he has wrung a confession out of him after hours of torture. His head rests in the crook of Napoleon’s neck so he doesn’t have to look at him. “Thank you for...tonight.”  _ For all of it.  _

“Of course,” Napoleon murmurs, keeping it quiet. He doesn’t, surprisingly, gloat, even as he hooks his fingers deeper into Illya. This is between them; a favor done, and acknowledged for what it is, a token of affection between them when physical ones were too risky. “Thank you, too, Illya.”

He wasn’t usually the sort of man one would take to the opera, but Napoleon respects him enough to trick him into it, now and again. Now they are even, as their bodies slide and arch together, Napoleon’s back against the wall, and Illya’s weight pinning him down as if he might float away otherwise. There’s no hiding how this turns Napoleon on; he’s hard as nails and Illya’s fingers find slick even on the meat of Napoleon’s ass, probably from all the wrestling and tousling earlier.

“Ah,” Illya says, following traces of slick and sinking his fingers into Napoleon until they're just lying there in the hallway fingering each other. “Will you let me fuck you when Gaby fucks me? Or am I going to have to pin you? Just like this?”

“One doesn’t negate the possibility of the other,” Napoleon assures him. “I’ll let you  _ and _ you can pin me, just like this.”

He grins and kisses Napoleon possessively, until Napoleon’s head rests on the floor and he tilts his chin back. 

“I'm still hearing an awful lot of English!” Gaby calls from the bedroom. “What happened to fucking everything but Russian out of him?”

“Your Russian is not that good,” Illya comments, collectively. Napoleon's is passable, and Gaby's is getting there, but it would probably hinder more than it would help. “Would cause problems.”

“I’m certain that I remember how to ask how much something costs, and when the train is coming,” Napoleon sighs, arching his hips, pushing another finger into Illya until he’s good and slick and stretched. “I’m sure I could extrapolate.”

Illya bites his lip, and then bites Napoleon’s. Napoleon’s jokes always amuse him, even if he doesn’t always laugh. He pulls his fingers out of Napoleon and licks them clean with relish he only has to exaggerate because he’s not ordinarily very expressive, and then lifts himself up. “Come on, Cowboy. Train is...coming?” 

It’s a terrible euphemism, and doesn’t even work in Russian, but he feels light and silly and isn’t even embarrassed. 

Napoleon refuses to give an inch, tugging Illya back down, quite content—now that he’s been stripped of his suit and his shoes—to roll around here on the floor, no matter how bad it is for their knees. In for the penny, in for the pound.

“I don’t know this joke in Russian, so bear with me,” Napoleon tells Illya, wrestling him over for control again, now pushing one of his knees up to his chest, slicking his own cock liberally with a mix of his own slick and lube. “An American tells a Russian that the United States is so free, he can stand in front of the white house and yell ‘To hell with Linden Johnson’.”

Illya grunts, hands gripping Napoleon’s shoulders and struggling just enough to make him work for it. Why is Napoleon  _ talking _ ? 

“W-what…?” he asks, but realizes too late that this might sound like encouragement to continue. “Cowboy, that…”

He pauses for effect, and also to start pushing into Illya, waiting for the snarl as he delivers the punch line in only faintly strained tones. “The Russian says ‘That’s nothing, I can stand in front of the Kremlin and yell ‘To hell with Linden Johnson,’ also.”

Illya  _ groans _ , and it’s mostly at the terrible joke that makes him wish he  _ had  _ forgotten English (even if he’s still smiling), because the hiss that comes next is his response to Napoleon fucking him, slowly but insistently. He tenses before he forces himself to relax, to take this, to just wait for it to feel good. He’s so wound up for it that the first brush of his prostate has him yelp in surprised delight, come already beading on his cock and his hands pushing at Napoleon’s chest. 

“Fuck! Cowboy!” he shouts, and isn’t even all that embarrassed that he shouted Napoleon’s nickname during sex. He tugs Napoleon into a kiss to make him forget, and also possibly to shut him up, as he tries to control the angle of the thrust. 

Napoleon braces his hands on Illya’s chest, shifting his hips to oblige, and he forgets how to tell any more jokes because Illya’s body is tight, but not painful—not for either of them, because he’s watching, at least in the moments when Illya isn’t kissing or biting him, few and far between though those are. 

Sliding one of his hands down, Napoleon groans softly into the kiss in answer, rolling his hips in a slow, unceasing motion while he fists his hand around Illya’s cock, staying away from his knot for now, just palming and stroking the head of him, gone slick and slippery with precum. It’s  _ good _ this way, just the two of them on the floor, like the animals their biology sometimes tells them to be. Well, maybe, in this instant, not  _ exactly _ like their instincts say, but there’s time, and Illya has stamina.

Illya is suffering, so close to that edge he can taste it, while Napoleon fucks into him with slick running down his thighs showing how much he’s enjoying this. Not that Illya is  _ not  _ enjoying this, he is, he is  _ too much _ , he’s caught in that crest of pleasure without release and is really unable to do much of anything to stop it or push it over, not with his champagne-muddled limbs and that sweet niggling desire to be good for Napoleon, and certainly not with the fireworks of sensations Napoleon is assaulting him with, and now if he comes he’s sure it won’t be enough with all that buildup—

He hears Napoleon groan, feels him bury himself balls-deep in him, and Illya also hears, like it’s someone else’s voice, his own cry of desperate pleasure, the cry of sensations being overwhelmed, and Napoleon stops touching him and fuck fuck  _ fuck  _ it doesn’t even matter if he comes he needs  _ more _ . 

“Cowboy,” he gasps in a strangled voice. 

After a moment, when Napoleon can get his breath, and with his cheek pressed gently against Illya’s chest, he answers briefly, “Peril.”

He closes his teeth briefly on one of Illya’s nipples to shock him out of complacency, and then pushes himself up on his hands, enough to kiss him, before he eases back, slipping free, kissing the side of Illya’s neck.

“Let’s go see what Gaby has in store for you,” he says, giving Illya a pat on the thigh like he’s done a fine job.

It earns Napoleon a snarl and a bite to the meat of his shoulder where Illya  _ knows  _ it makes him weak when he does that. He does get to his feet, somehow, his dick still rock hard and come dribbling out his ass. It’s very humiliating, on the one hand, but it also feels good to feel so filthy. Illya spins Napoleon back around and kisses him, only to walk him backwards into the bedroom where Gaby is waiting, draped across the bed like a goddess, or a painting. 

She’s still wearing her shoes, but nothing else, like some pin up calendar girl, and she’s also playing with the leather belt from someone’s trousers like she’s thinking about using it. 

Smiling as she sees how flushed they are, and how hard Illya still is, she says, “I thought you had forgotten about me.”


	5. Chapter 5

“Napoleon, did you take good care of our Red Peril?” Gaby asks from the bed.

“He doesn’t like my jokes,” Napoleon observes, rubbing his shoulder where Illya had bitten him; they’d all be wearing marks tomorrow, if he’s a wagering man. “I’m sure that means he’s ready for you.”

He climbs onto the bed as well, pausing to kiss his way up one of Gaby’s bare legs, perhaps in hope that she won’t tie him up with the belt, but all it earns him is that she loops it around his neck—more like a collar than a weapon. 

“You left him unsatisfied,” she observes. 

“We’re not done,” Napoleon answers. 

Gaby smiles at him, warmly, proud. “You’re right. We’re not. Good boy.” 

She uses the belt to tug Napoleon into a kiss, the loop tightening around his throat until he gives a soft cough and she loosens it. Looking up, however, her eyes go dark as she sees Illya just standing there, like the big dumb puppy that he is, both hands on his cock as he watches them. 

“Now who gave you permission to touch that?” she asks. 

Illya, lust-clouded, can only find a distant, “Huh?” to reply with. He wasn’t aware he needed permission? But he finds himself dropping his hands to his sides, and Gaby lets him stand there for several seconds, because he probably would stand there all night like that if she didn’t pat the bed next to her. When she does, Illya goes to the spot as though summoned, and noses in for a hungry kiss. 

“Is this your belt, or his?” she asks. 

Illya doesn’t know, don’t ask him this right now, but he tears his eyes away from her to inspect the belt. “Mine.” 

“Then maybe  _ you  _ should wear it,” she says, watching them both carefully as she unloops the leather around Napoleon’s neck and winds it, instead, around Illya’s wrists. She’s mostly thinking that Napoleon would throw a fit if Illya damaged or destroyed one of his too-expensive items of clothing, and she expects Illya of the ripping-an-entire-pillow-in-half will destroy this belt. That will be a thing to see. She’s also still trying to figure out which one of them is the bondage slut, and if it’s not either or both then she’s simply going to have to make them like it, use positive reinforcement like they are Pavlov’s spies. Never mind that bondage is something of a hazard of the job. 

It’s a hazard of the bedroom, too, where she’s concerned. 

Napoleon sits back, now, letting Illya have his turn of Gaby’s attention, trusting his patience to let him observe until she decides what she wants from him. Instead, he makes himself useful by taking control of Illya’s hands once they’re bound and finding a place on the headboard to loop the tail end of the belt to, securely. It’s more a suggestion of a hold, for Illya. If he wanted, he could probably pull the whole headboard off the bed and send them all tumbling to the ground. 

Illya goes quietly, happy with this arrangement, at the dark lust in Gaby’s eyes and how Napoleon looks just a little  _ relieved _ . What he’s not happy with is how gentle and teasing the rest of their touches are. “Gaby,” he warns, but she doesn’t respond, idly rolling his nipples between her fingers.

While Napoleon doesn’t mind the rough housing, or being physically pinned in place by his alphas, Napoleon shies from having his hands tied. This is better, because while Gaby teases and twists Illya up into a knot, making sure he’s almost forgotten there’s anyone else in the room but her, Napoleon can shift, move around her to kiss the back of her neck, just once, before almost trading places with her so he can lean down and get his mouth on the head of Illya’s cock before he expects it; but light. All light touches. Slow teasing patterns with just the tip of his tongue that ride Illya along the edge but don’t bring him over.

“Fu—uck!” Illya grunts, body arching up so sharply that he nearly unsettles them both, and it reminds them that the belt is more a prop than anything. That almost makes it sweeter, and Gaby gives them both a pleased grin. 

“I should have him keep you there all night,” Gaby says, straddling Illya’s chest, watching his changes of expression. “Right on the edge. I think he’d break before you would, but I wouldn’t put a bet on it. Napoleon’s very talented. Do you think he’d answer my command first, or yours?”

Illya swears several more times in Russian before returning to English to answer without reservation, “Yours. I—ahh—I would—” 

He’s trying to find out how to beg without  _ begging _ , but it’s very hard to be clever with his tongue when Napoleon is so clever with his. 

Gaby laughs and turns, running her fingers through Napoleon’s hair. “Napoleon was so good for us, this evening, wasn’t he, Illya? Taking us to the opera. Giving us entirely too much champagne. What can we do for  _ him _ , now?”

“Maybe let him sit on my knot,” Illya supplies, very quickly. Right now, he’s not sure anything but knotting his omega will do it—though he has a feeling she’s going to try to prove him wrong. 

“What’s this? English?” Gaby laughs, scooting forward until she can rub the head of her cock over Illya’s lips. His tongue darts out to lick her, tentatively, and then she thrusts in.  

For long minutes they just tease him, until Napoleon feels him start to relax, as if resigning himself to his fate. Accepting it. It almost makes him want to give Illya just what he’s asked for, but he knows better than to try and push his luck with Gaby. He’d had to earn his first release.

Gaby eases her hips back when she’s sure Illya’s good and wet, and then traces her fingers under his slightly damp chin; the angle hadn’t been easy for him. “You ready for me now? I hope Napoleon did a good job stretching you out.”

Illya licks his lips as if chasing the taste of her, and twists his hands, balled into tight fists, above his head. There’s too much of them, and somehow not enough, and he’s dizzy with it. “Yes. Yeah, he—”

She gets off his chest and pushes him onto his side, lining up behind him and testing with her fingers how wet and open he still is. 

“Don’t touch him until I say,” Gaby tells Napoleon, sternly.

“And you just said how good I’d been,” he says, on the turn of pouting, but he settles in to watch as she starts pushing into Illya in one firm motion; slow but without stopping.

“You,” she grunts. “Can touch yourself.”

Napoleon obliges, unhurriedly. 

If Illya blushes as she slides her fingers into him, feeling how sloppy his with Napoleon’s come already, and if he gasps as she slides into him, whiting out his vision briefly as her heavy cock brushes along his sensitive prostate, he actually whimpers when he sees Napoleon lying back and brushing his fingers over his cock while he just  _ watches _ . “Fuck. Cowboy—Napoleon.” 

Gaby slams the last few inches home, punching air out of him. 

“Gaby!” he gasps, tugging on the belt and rattling the headboard. 

“Mm, good boy,” she hums, getting a handful of his hair and tugging his head back into a kiss. “But not that good. I don’t think you’ve earned him touching you, yet. Would you like to earn that?”

Illya nods, swallowing a huge lump in his throat. 

“Why don’t you sit up here, Cowboy?” Gaby pats the bed by the headboard. She’s a little breathless from holding still inside of him. “You have his mouth, and tell me when he’s earned a hand on his cock. Unless you can think of a better way?” 

“Is this an exercise in patience for me or for him?” Napoleon wonders, wanting very badly to have more than Illya’s tongue inside him, like they’d promised earlier. He knows they’ll get there, but he’s never been terribly patient about these things.

“I can make it for both of you,” she says, rolling her hips mercilessly into Illya to grind her knot against his prostate until he’s sweating with it.

“I can—” Illya begins to volunteer, but practically screams as her knot strains his rim, and he’s not sure he trusts himself to say another word. If this killed him, he can’t help thinking it would be a lovely way to go. 

“How’s he going to speak sweet Russian nothings to us if his mouth is occupied?”

“You could stay where you are and take nothing, just watch,” Gaby threatens. 

Taking his leave while he has it, Napoleon shifts up, and though the position is somewhat awkward with Illya tied, he figures it out, first to kiss Illya long and slow, and then to guide his head down between his legs as he hangs onto the headboard, too.

Though somewhat afraid to move, Illya gets himself up on his elbows, twisting at the waist to take Napoleon into his mouth. He works along his cock with busy lips and tongue, sucking gently but not teasing, bearing down as he works him against the back of his throat. Part of him will always wonder what would happen if the KGB—or any other Russian, honestly—ever found him like this, letting another alpha fuck him while he sucks omega cock—a German and an American, no less. He might be able to argue coercion with how his hands are tied, but he’s too obviously enjoying this, especially when Gaby shifts him onto his front and pins his hips down to let gravity help her get her knot past his rim. His cries are muffled in Napoleon’s lap.

Napoleon takes pity on him; mostly because he doesn’t want to spill over into orgasm again so soon, he doesn’t want to until he’s got someone’s knot inside him, and at this point he’s not particularly picky whose.

“Now,” Napoleon gasps, easing his fingers into Illya’s hair to give himself a break to breathe in. “He deserves his reward.”

“Impatient,” she says, but she doesn’t tell him ‘no’. 

“I want more than just my hands on him,” Napoleon tells her, matter of factly. “Right, Peril? We have an arrangement.”

“Right, right,” Illya says, and he knows that this is how false confessions are gotten through torture because he’s ready to agree to anything. “Let me fuck him, please.” 

Gaby grunts: this is a tight fit, and she thinks briefly of pulling out, but doesn’t. “If it will  _ relax  _ you…”

“ _ Please _ ,” Illya says again, like he won’t say it twice (but they both know he’ll say it a thousand times, for her), but he feels almost like he’s rutting, shuddering and sweating, like if he doesn’t get his knot in someone soon he’ll actually  _ die _ . 

“You’ll wait,” she says, hauling him up onto his knees and elbows, digging his fingers into his hips as she rocks into him until her knot begins to swell. “You’ll wait til I knot you. Napoleon, can you get under there?” 

“Don’t  _ break _ him,” Napoleon says, but he eases in, bears up under Illya on his own knees, though it takes some doing, arching his back, carrying the weight of both of them on his sturdy frame. 

“He can take it,” she says, with utmost confidence, but her voice is tight; Illya’s body is squeezing her almost painfully, he’s so  _ tight _ . His skin feels hot, too. 

“I think we gave her the wrong nickname,” Napoleon says, shifting back, trying to get a hand on Illya to guide him into place, but no sooner does he have his hand on Illya’s cock than Gaby is shoving forward to keep Illya’s body from pushing her out, and Napoleon’s taking him before he quite expected to, and he has to scrabble in the sheets for the girth and quickness of it. He grunts, “ _ she _ should be ‘Peril’.”

“Hush,” Gaby growls, focusing, like she can force her knot to expand more slowly if she just wills it. 

Illya isn’t sure about that, but it’s a relief to be inside Napoleon, sliding his hands up the bars of the headboard to grip the top of it to give him room. He feels like he’s being spitted between them, bright sparks exploding in front of his vision continuously—like he’s about to faint, only he knows he’s just dizzy and overwhelmed. He lets himself sink into Napoleon as he relaxes against his back. 

Gaby realizes immediately that this was a good idea, as Illya stills and relaxes marginally, and she kisses about halfway up his spine to soothe him (she can’t remotely reach his neck, even with his legs spread wide she can barely fuck him kneeling upright, but Napoleon is right, the sheer  _ size _ of him is half the appeal). “Good, good. Both of you. So good.” 

She begins to rock into him in earnest, and it’s not long before she comes with a shout and her knot swells all the way, making Illya kick his legs and cry out, scrambling and whining until his body gets used to the intrusion—only he's not sure it's ever going to.

Napoleon pushes up against him, holding him up, taking both their weight as he feels Illya’s breath hitching and gasping.”You’ve got it, it’s alright.”

His body wasn’t  _ built _ for it, but technically, Napoleon knew, his own wasn’t really designed for the things they’d occasionally done to it, either. It didn’t mean it wouldn’t feel amazing, but he could feel how  _ much _ it is for Illya. The position they’re in makes it difficult for Napoleon to take too much control, but he can reach down to get his hand on his own cock and stroke himself, squeezing Illya with his internal muscles in time.

Gaby stays as still as she can, trying to soothe Illya by rubbing his sides, by giving him plenty of time. She huffs out against his skin. “Not so stoic now, are you?”

Illya makes a soft sound attempting protest, focusing on just breathing and not drooling into Napoleon's hair. It feels like his guts are being squished up into his lungs and he's somewhat grateful for the position of his hands because of it.

But the way Napoleon is moving, and the fact that he can smell him touching himself sends him over the edge, somehow, his knot inflating all at once, making him feel wrung out and now actually worried that he’s going to faint. 

Napoleon gasps and tenses, too, pushing back instead of jerking forward, trying to get Illya’s knot sitting someplace it works rather than any place where it won’t fit, and he rockets over the edge as it pushes against every part of him that’s good so hard he can’t help it, squirting release through his own fingers in an amount he wasn’t sure he’d ever thought himself capable of.

“Cowboy? Peril? Illya?”

Illya realizes he's tensed up again, worried, but surprisingly, very little hurts right now, and he tells himself to relax, kissing Napoleon’s shoulder as Napoleon tries to catch his breath with both hands on the bed now. 

“[Fine, it's fine. I'm okay]” he gasps, shuddering once or twice before his body relaxes. “[Love this. Love you.]”

It takes until he hears them both laugh for Illya to realize he had of course slipped into Russian, and his groan has less to do with how Gaby is practically sitting on his prostate and more to do with embarrassment. Now he'll never hear the end of it. 

( _ To be fair _ , he tells himself,  _ Russian has a plural ‘you’ that English is insufficient for _ .)

“[The train has left the station,]” Napoleon says, with a perky uptick to his voice that suggests he’s absolutely counting this as a victory point. 

Gaby chuckles low, and it reverberates through Illya so Napoleon feels it. “Appears so. You all right, Napoleon? Do we need to move?”

“It’s going to take a coordinated effort, but I think we can all lay down flat,” Napoleon offers, stretching a little. He sounds good, like he’s just taken his fill of pleasure (which he has), and absolutely gotten the victory he wanted from Illya. “Peril? How are your hands? Should I undo the belt?”

Illya nods, though to which question they are unsure. 

“[Okay. I'm okay,]” he says, but they don't understand or don't listen, and Gaby slips the belt from around his wrists. Illya staggers, going limp against Napoleon’s back, afraid to move. His arms feel like noodles, anyway.

“Maybe we lay to one side? Unless you don't mind us crushing you?”  Gaby asked, running her hands through Napoleon’s hair

“I don’t care,” Napoleon groans, just flopping down and taking them both with him in a yelping, protesting pile. He immediately makes a noise of protest, trapped under them in a wet spot of mutual making, at least glad to be out of his suit before any of this happened.

“Your fault,” Gaby says, as they rearrange their limbs into something comfortable. “Thank you for a nice night.”

Illya groans a sound of agreement, past using any words, and buries his face in Napoleon’s shoulder as he struggles to keep still and breathing. It's not a very comfortable position, but there is nothing in the world like knotting your omega and being knotted by your alpha at the same time. He just wants to enjoy it, and with his newly-freed hands (now that he he's so firmly, absolutely trapped) he hooks one arm around Napoleon and reaches back for Gaby with the other. She takes his hand and squeezes it, and kisses his back while waiting for her knot to go down. 

“You're both so beautiful like this,” she hums, feeling something very at peace inside her. “Thank you, Napoleon. Thank you, Illya.”

Napoleon has made a point of never getting used to anything in his adult life, but this, he thinks, as he settles down to nap until they could all ease apart, he could get used to.

Eventually they do roll over, with Gaby as the big spoon and Illya’s arms tight around Napoleon. Even when her knot goes down she only gets up to throw a blanket around them. Illya isn't much help, falling asleep almost immediately, but he's a warm weight between them as Gaby and Napoleon more slowly, intermittently whispering and giggling to each other, drift off. 

...

One moment, Illya is cosied up between them, one arm under Napoleon’s neck and hooked protectively around his chest, the other flung behind him to wrap around Gaby’s slender waist. He's warm and comfortable, and can't really feel his legs and that's fine, because he feels faint bruises forming on his wrists and neck and places where they bit or marked him. He doesn't remember dreaming. 

Then he sits up, flinging Gaby off from where she was half draped over him, and yanking his arm up to leave Napoleon abruptly without a pillow. 

“The Parisians were Nazis,” he says, panting heavily.

“ _ What? _ ” Napoleon demands, in clear protest of being unsettled from the absolute depths of his slumber. He eyes Illya with disbelief, before he finally realizes what’s likely happening. 

Gaby picks herself up off the floor, naked and grumbling in German, ending with, “you’re too big for your own good, you bear.”

Napoleon rolls over and shoves a pillow over his head. “You’re dreaming, Peril. It hardly makes sense; Parisian Nazis, what a nightmare.”

“Not really French,” Illya says. “The couple I heard shitting on the Jewish artist. He said  _ il a rugi  _ when he clearly meant  _ il a rougi _ , and she said it the same way.”

Gaby shoves him back down and sprawls on him. “Bad French and anti-Semitism are, sadly, not limited to Nazis, Illya. I can't even hear the difference in these words.”

“ _ Exactly _ ,” he replies. 

Gaby huffs, offended now. “Nor is being German.”

But now Napoleon’s interest is piqued, and he pries his tired body out from under the pillow; he wants nothing more than to cocoon himself in the blankets and return to sleep. This is their downtime, they’re supposed to be enjoying themselves between missions, or at least resting and recovering before they get sent halfway across the world. However, he also trusts Illya’s instincts. 

“So, what were they up to at that opera?” Napoleon wonders, lounging indolently on his back and looking up at the alphas from the wreckage of their sheets like temptation brought to life. “Any thoughts, Peril? Should we notify Waverly?”

“We’re on  _ vacation _ ,” Gaby protests, scoffing.

“Something was  _ off _ about them,” Illya insists, scrambling over Gaby—he notes he is sore, but not debilitatingly so—to get out of bed. “Napoleon, they were talking to you, the older couple, and you were teaching them something, weren't you?”

He hadn't noticed it before because Napoleon was always coaching them on the cultural significance of things, so it was just something they were used to hearing from him, but to be informing the  _ French _ about their own culture? They had to be spies! Illya is about to say as much when his knees actually buckle and he goes down with a curse. Okay, shit, he’s more than a little sore. 

“Illya!” Napoleon wakes up for real to see Illya fall over, sitting up sharply and then regretting it. He winces, too, but then picks himself all the rest of the way up. Gaby was already at Illya’s side, helping him back up.

“Slow down, Peril,” she says. “Even if they were Nazis, there’s no sense breaking your head on the ground.”

“Okay, okay,” Illya groans, rolling onto one side. He doesn’t think he will be able to sit for a week. “What was it you told them?” 

“I was teaching them the history of the painter,” Napoleon says, breezing past the pair of them into the bathroom. “They were complaining that the new painting lacked any of the marks of a great. I never let an incorrect statement about art stand.”

Illya hums, and lets Gaby drag him back to bed. “We should check it out. Could be problem.” 

Once in bed, Gaby twists Illya’s arm and unceremoniously rolled him over to check between his legs for sign of injury. 

“He’s fine. No tearing,” she finally determines, and then slaps his ass. “You had me scared, Illya!” 

“Of course I am fine,” Illya snarls back, righting himself as she lets him up. “And I have a bad feeling about those two.” 

“Perhaps we  _ should _ tear him up a little,” Napoleon calls back, leaning out of the bathroom to observe the pair of them as he brushes his teeth, before he shrugs it off and leans back in to finish getting cleaned up.

If he catches Illya raising one eyebrow at him like he dares him to try, he doesn't respond.

Gaby sighs. “Can we at least look into it in the morning? It’s the middle of the night.”

“In Russia, it is always this dark,” Illya says, feeling like he might be worried over nothing. There's something lingering still, like a dream he can't remember. He wishes he had had less to drink. 

“Your bad feeling may be entirely justified,” Napoleon agrees. “But it’s hardly a starting point. What do you suggest we do, Peril? We could return to the Palais Garnier and see if they’re lurking about causing trouble, but if not, there are a lot of people in Paris.”

“There had to be guest list, no?” Illya asks, but when Napoleon crawls back into bed with them, rolling on Gaby’s other side where the bed is cleaner, Illya begins to feel sleepy again. Maybe he is still drunk.  _ What time is it? _

Gaby smirks at Napoleon and runs her hands through Illya’s hair, which quiets him further. 

“I...suppose,” she begins, glancing at Napoleon for confirmation, “we could look into it. In the morning.”

She's firm on this part.

“Our alpha is the voice of reason,” Napoleon agrees, leaning into Gaby, and reaching out across her body to rest his palm gently on Illya’s stomach. “Something is definitely wrong.”

“Hush,” Gaby says, elbowing Napoleon gently, but even this doesn't disturb Illya. “Sleep, I know it’s going to be a long day in the morning.”


	6. Chapter 6

She’s right, of course; Napoleon manages to get them the guest list, though it is several hundred names long and most of them are French. He offers the book to Illya as if he were a cat presenting its owner with a dead mouse. The use is not immediately apparent. 

“I don’t suppose you recall their names, Peril?” he says. “I don’t, I was hardly paying attention to them.”

Illya doesn't at all, but he wracks his brain and looks at the list. He's standing now, though it's mainly because he does not want to sit. 

He thinks the name might have begun with an S, and scans the list once for S names without anything jumping out at him, but gets nothing, so he looks again more slowly.

Gaby hooks her arms around him, pinching his sides playfully, but he doesn't stir, so she goes to Napoleon, who is more responsive. “Thank you, dear. Can I ask how you did it? Or does that ruin the magic?”

“I identified the guest book manufacturer when I signed it upon entering today,” Napoleon tells her. “I happen to know which stores carry that manufacturer’s bound books and so I acquired another one, and returned to the concierge desk to retrieve the keys I left this morning and simply swapped the book for a new one, after forging a few pages of nonsense.”

He rolls his shoulders in a shrug. “No more magic than it had to be, I suppose.”

Gaby gently pokes his nose with her finger as though she finds him both very clever and very cute. “What would we do without you?”

Curling his arms around her, he watches Illya as he frowns over the book, and then he shakes his head. “Are there any at all that aren’t French?” 

That sparks something. 

“Belgian,” Illya mutters instantly, and that might have explained their accents, actually—unless it was a convincing cover. 

Then he sees it.

“Moens. It's them.”

His mind takes him back to an old KGB briefing, tracking down Nazis fleeing Germany. A brother and sister, famously responsible for condemning homosexuals to the camps—their work was still half-praised, and no one looked hard for them. “Adéle and Honoré must be aliases. I remember old briefing about them. Not good people. They are probably up to something.”

“Well, are we going to make a hobby of our work, then?” Napoleon wonders, now that Illya has something, looking at the names. Now that he says them, something does trip up in his memory; they’d been real pieces of work. Now what on earth were they doing here?

“Napoleon, you can’t mean to just let them do whatever they want to,” Gaby says, apparently at last won over to Illya’s side on the matter.

“Alright, alright, but if we find that they’ve hoarded any spoils of war when we bring them in, I’m keeping them,” he says, adjusting his cufflinks. “In the meantime, we’d best find out what they’re actually up to.”

“Mercenary,” Illya says, but fondly, and kisses Napoleon, and squeezes Gaby’s middle before going to put on his shoes. 

Gaby takes her sunglasses off. They have a beautiful patio, and Illya hasn’t touched breakfast. “What,  _ now _ ?” 

“Of course now,” Illya says. “They are dangerous. They could be plotting something.” 

“Illya, their entire party is defunct and they’re in hiding. What could they possibly be planning?” Gaby demanded. 

“Wouldn’t you rather know than not?” Napoleon says, smiling at her charmingly, taking the registry back from Illya and disposing of it promptly into a hidden space behind the cabinets. “Illya, if you recognized the Moens, how likely is it that they recognized you as well?”

Gaby groans, but she knows that once these two are going in the same direction it’s a bit like a wrecking ball—you just don’t get in the way. In fact, it is very likely that about that much destruction is about to ensue somewhere, in the course of their attempts to apprehend these people. Property damage seems to be par for the course with these two.

“I’ve seen their files, never met them before,” Illya says, and then shrugs, “Unless they get files on KGB agents.” 

“All right, I need to get dressed. Don’t you two do anything crazy yet!” Gaby calls, taking a pastry with her into the bathroom. 

Illya sighs when she is gone. “I am sorry. I did not mean to spoil our vacation, Cowboy.” 

He goes over to the table now and picks up a pastry that Napoleon had brought home with the ledger. 

“Be sorry later,” Napoleon says. “You’re the one who has to do all the legwork while you’re sore and hungover.”

-

Illya and Gaby encounter the couple at a cafe, flirting enough to discomfort the couple into leaving behind a checkbook with an address and their genuine names: Maria and Hans Moens, confirmed Nazis. 

Upon discovering the plot, Napoleon loses all sense of hesitation in their engagement with the pair, breaking into their base of operations to locate all of their sloppy, hate-filled plans, so that they themselves can counter them. Ultimately what it comes down to is a game of theft beating destruction played in two acts.

In the first, Napoleon steals from them their bankroll piece; a vanished canvas that he sees, covets, possesses and then protects—without mentioning the felony to either of his compatriots. It’s clear that the pair intend to fund their future endeavors with the sale of the item, and he outright refuses to let that translation happen. If he doesn’t immediately turn the piece over, well…it’s safe with him.

In the second act, their espionage encounters a snag when the Nazis break in, and find the Palais Garnier already broken into, and well-occupied by one extremely daring art thief. 

“Well,” Napoleon offers, holding his hands up. “I got here first, if we’re all gentlemen. I should be allowed to steal it first. If you want to come to an arrangement with me afterwards, I might possibly sell it to you.”

Maria pushes her omega brother behind her: Gaby, watching from above down the scope of her rifle, sees something a bit too familiar for siblings in the movement, and wonders if the violent homophobia in their profile hides some other deviance—but she never finds out.  

“We don’t make deals,” she responds, giving up the pretense of being French now and speaking English, accented German. She and her brother both draw handguns. “So you either leave, or they’ll be replacing the carpet along with the ceiling.” 

“You’re with those alphas, aren’t you?” Hans spits. “The three of you? It’s disgusting. Maybe we’ll use you as bait to snare the others!” 

Napoleon moves forward, his hands still on display; empty. “You can think what you like of what I get up to in my own time. I reserve the right to think less of Nazis for what they get up to  _ all _ the time, however.”

Illya thinks it odd how maniacal all fascists seem to sound, like they go to classes to learn how to do it. But he begins to see red the second the weapons appeared, and his twitch starts when Hans suggests using Napoleon as bait. He’s not going to be able to wait much longer to take the shot. 

Napoleon clucks his tongue. “I have a different proposition; you put your guns away and lay down on the ground right now and perhaps those alphas won’t redecorate the lovely carpet with the inside contents of your skulls. Think about it.”

Gaby’s finger is already starting to go tight on the trigger, too, while Napoleon pushes the pair back just by crowding their space, and his words clearly put fear into them. She almost feels sorry for them, but not so much she won’t hesitate to take the shot. 

“We’re not going to rest until every piece of shit passing as art made by—”

Illya prefers to take the rest of that sentence as  _ Russian  _ so that he pulls the trigger with extreme prejudice, twice, before putting a third bullet into the body of the man that Gaby has already shot before he hits the ground. 

It’s over quickly—though the Nazis got at least one shot off, and he didn’t see where it landed. “Solo! Everything all right?” 

At the lack of immediate answer, Illya drops his rifle and practically flies downstairs. 

Napoleon is examining a hole in the plaster facade of the building when they make it to him, rather than the two bodies littering the steps.

“I suppose we had better call Waverly about this,” he says, meaning the mess they’ve made of the stairs. “Shame, really, but sometimes you must take out the trash.”

Gaby kicks one of the corpses. “I wish they would all just let it go. They are very sore losers.”

“I couldn’t agree more. Shall we take one last look at what our handiwork saved?” Napoleon says, extending his arm for Gaby first, and then Illya. 

Illya’s heart is still pounding, that usual mix of battle-rage now joined by a familiar terror that he gets at every single gunshot, worried that Gaby or Napoleon will be taken from him in an instant—but they’ve won the day, and neither of his loves are hurt, and the painting by a Russian Jew stands whole and defiant over the bodies of the dead Nazis. 

It somehow makes the painting more beautiful.

They stay until Waverly sends someone for cleanup, and they help roll bodies into bags. Illya helps scrub the blood from the carpet while Napoleon is given plaster to fill in the bullet-hole in the wall, and Gaby helps disarm the explosives they find planted around the Palais. Waverly’s men ask zero questions and speak to them as little as possible. 

Gaby doesn’t have much in the way of German patriotism, but what she does have is wounded every time she has to deal with another Nazi, all of them like the ghost of her uncle Rudy haunting her. Maybe it makes her feel defiant that at least two people who would violently oppose her relationship with another alpha are dead, because she curls a hand around Illya’s wrist in full view of Waverly’s men as Illya glances up at the painting one last time. She looks at the sweet, innocent rapture on his face, and then back at the body bags disappearing out a back door, and wonders what could have gone differently in her life to have made her one of them. 

Napoleon dusts plaster from his hands, standing next to them and peering up as well, pleased with the results and also pleased with the well protected canvas rolled up under his suit coat, hidden even from Waverly’s men. 

He’ll give it back, of course, but he wants to look at it a while first. 

Then they get to go home again, and this time Napoleon’s firm insistence is, “And this time we really are on vacation.”

“I agree,” Gaby says. “We’ve saved a historical landmark.”

“Job well done,” Napoleon says. “I think we can all agree that’s earned some rest. And some fine food.”

Illya blinks and comes back to the present to find that Gaby still looks like her thoughts are somewhere else. He takes her hands, pulling her close quick enough to force her eyes to meet his. “And some dancing.” 

There’s no music, but he twirls her around their small kitchen and around Napoleon, who is somehow already rolling up his sleeves and cooking something delicious-smelling. 

“Are you alright?” he asks, when the smile does not quite reach her eyes. 

“Just thinking,” Gaby says, allowing Illya to twirl her around, looking up at him and shaking her head after a moment. “Things could have been different.”

“Would you like them to be?” Napoleon wonders, still working with dough of some kind, rolling it out on the counter into coccoli. 

“No, but how small a change might it have been,” Gaby says, “for any of us, I suppose.”

She’s not tall enough to spin Illya, but she does seize the lead in their dance, smiling at him and this time it almost touches her eyes. “I’m glad I didn’t follow uncle Rudy’s path.”

“Is  _ that _ what has you worried?” Napoleon wonders, stepping away from the counter, and bowing into the dance with flour still on his hands. He eases her more into a waltz, but lets her lead. “Your heart’s entirely too good for that. After all, you went all soft for Illya’s puppy dog eyes practically the instant you met him.”

“So did you,” Gaby answers, stung.

“No, he almost broke me in half in a bathroom,” Napoleon admits, winking over her head at Illya. “That was what won me over, and I can hardly say it made me  _ soft.” _

Illya actually laughs, and pours himself a vodka and soda that he expects Gaby will steal from him and sits down to watch them (sitting is still not entirely comfortable, but he is tired). “Cowboy is right. You are very different from Rudy. You use your head.” 

Gaby shakes it, feeling a bit bewildered, and as Napoleon turns back to his cooking she sits on Illya’s knee. “No, I’m—not sure I always do. There was a time when—when I was young. Where I might have done anything to be loved.” 

Illya kisses her hand. “ _ We _ do not want you to do anything, and we’ll love you, anyway.”

“Yes, but—” she blinks, angry tears, her voice going tight, “it’s not just Nazis who don’t like who we are. And some days I just don’t care, but if we get caught...”

She does take a swig of Illya’s glass, downing most of it in one go. 

“You never told me what my Uncle Rudy did to you,” she demands of Napoleon’s back, the only part of him she has the courage to ask this of. 

Napoleon’s shoulders go tense for only an instant, before he turns a soft look over his shoulder at her, and then an almost beseeching one to Illya. “It doesn’t matter. He didn’t get to do what he wanted to me. They weren’t kind to you or your father, either, Gaby.”

She doesn’t like the answer, and Napoleon can see how it eats at her.

“It’s the past,” he tries again. “Illya, pour me one of those, will you?”

Illya’s  long arms mean he doesn't have to get up to refill his glass turned Gaby’s, or to pour a new one for Napoleon, while he still has an arm around Gaby’s waist. He thinks it would be better if he tells the story so that Napoleon doesn't have to, but he speaks slowly enough that Napoleon can interrupt him. 

“Your uncle had a book,” Illya says. “A book of the…medical experiments he made during the war.”

Napoleon fries the cocoli in deep oil, producing small puffy bites of dough that he sprinkles lightly with salt as they cool briefly on towels, and then brings the whole plate of them to the table with honey, setting them down. 

No one touches them, though they smell good. And since Napoleon does not stop him, and Gaby says nothing, Illya continues. “I believe he wanted to include Napoleon in his collection.”

Illya can't see Gaby’s face. Napoleon can, but her expression is unreadable. She doesn't look at him. 

“He didn't cut you open. You don't have enough scars,” she says, matter of fact. Illya can feel her trembling faintly. 

“No,” Napoleon assures her. “They were at a premium for time. Less creative. And Illya had a tracker in my shoe.”

Standing there in the kitchen of their safehouse, with his apron on and a soft expression on his face, it’s hard to think how close he had come. He still remembers every instant of pain, endured with the lingering scent of  Vinciguerra’s perfume sunk into his clothes. He shakes it off, as a dog might unburden its coat of water, and leans down, kissing her forehead gently.

“Gaby, it doesn’t matter,” he reminds her. “Worse things may happen to all of us, come the future. It will be easier to endure knowing the two of you could come for me at any second, you know. Like I would always come for you.”

Even as he says the words they seem to surprise him, and thus unburdened of what seems (to Napoleon) to be the terrible secret of his attachment, he springs to nervous action, moving away from them and pulling off his apron, going about cleaning up the kitchen. 

Gaby is too comforted by these words to do anything but take them into her and hold onto them like a lifeline, near enough to tears to not trust herself to do anything but finish Illya’s drink. 

But  _ Illya _ catches how accidental Napoleon’s admission of feelings is, and when Napoleon turns around he is smirking openly. Napoleon rebounds Illya’s smirk with a faint look of disbelief, his brows drawing inward to frame a discouraging scowl. He gives his head a little shake, but it’s too late. Illya  _ knows. _

“ _ Would _ , not could, Cowboy,” Illya corrects, still grinning, like he's won a long-standing game of chess. “We will always have your back. It is our job, after all. We're being  _ paid _ to do it.”

It's teasing enough to lighten the mood, but Illya makes sure Napoleon knows how serious he is, even if Gaby elbows him for being mean. 

Napoleon gives his head another shake, and his expression softens out to something less worried, before he joins them at the table again.

His apprehension makes Illya want to kiss him. But as a peace offering, Illya changes the subject, popping a cocoli into his mouth, too hot. “Good! Hot! Oh, it's so hot! But so good!”

Gaby manages to laugh at his antics, and tries one, too, more careful with the heat. “It is good.”

“Of course they are,” Napoleon says, reaching for one of his own. He breaks it open and applies honey liberally to the steaming insides, and then eats with a look of bliss. He finally has a long, healthy sip of the drink Illya mixed for him as well. “I brought home a souvenir, I thought I should tell you before you discovered it all on your own.”

Gaby pauses mid-gulp. “You...what?” 

“What did you steal and from where?” Illya asks, mildly annoyed rather than alarmed his time. He mixes himself and Gaby another drink, marveling at how light the vodka bottle already is. “I thought I was watching you very carefully.” 

“I took it from the Moens’, I thought you might not mind,” he says. “Once I've restored it to a frame, you can see for yourselves.”

“Oh, I do not mind,” Illya says, and can’t help a grin at Napoleon. 

He looks extremely proud of himself, which seems like it should be a bad sign. Considering the matter settled, Napoleon enjoys their presence nearby, and perhaps in that instant realizes this is permanent in a way he'd never expected to have.

“Besides, we all need retirement funds. I know the pair of you are young enough to live forever, but one of us at least should be ready to ease us gracefully into old age,” he says, raising his glass to theirs in a toast.

Illya and Gaby clink their glasses to his. 

“I’m a communist. I do not need a retirement fund.” Illya says, and gets a laugh from both of them. 

Gaby leans across the table and tugs Napoleon into a kiss by his tie. “Neither do you. You’re pretty enough to have  _ two  _ alphas falling over themselves wanting to take care of you in your dotage...”

She’s giggling far too much to be taken seriously, and Illya reins her back in. “Hush, he’s only got a few years on me. It is not nice to tease old men like us.” 

“Ah, so you’re both cradle robbers?” she asks, and cackles, and finishes her drink before anyone can take it away. She isn’t that young—if she were an omega and had any relatives who cared, they might call her an old maid by now—but young enough to not have been a child during the War. Even Illya had been too young to fight. She imagines an eighteen-year-old Napoleon in a trench, though, and sobers very quickly. 

“We all know it’s you robbing the grave,” Napoleon says, in utter deadpan, but he winks. “Since you decidedly wear the pants in this relationship. And a good thing too.”

“I wish…” she begins, touching Napoleon’s knee and trying to figure out how to take them through her train of thought so this will make sense, but gives up: “I wish we could always have been there for you. For each other.” 

Illya and Napoleon exchange a look, part-worried, part-fond. Illya settles on, “You drink too much.”  

“We all do,” Napoleon agrees, finishing his drink and another of the warm puffs of pastry before he surrenders his chair at the table to sit on Illya’s lap as well, though it takes some arranging. The chair creaks. “But we won the day today, we’ve earned it.”

“Yes,” Gaby giggles, leaning against Napoleon’s shoulder in a loose, affectionate pile. “Pour me another, Illya!”

“Perhaps just a soda,” Napoleon suggests, kissing her cheek. “But I absolutely refuse to go on any adventures tomorrow.”

“I cannot make anyone a drink with you like this,” Illya says, overwhelmed, though he’s not about to complain. He can curl an arm around each of them like this, and feel the press of their flesh against him. They feel warm and soft and real. For the record, he’s sorry, too, that he only just met them, and wasted some of that time resenting them. He imagines, distantly, how warm they could keep him on a cold Russian night, and how he might have kept Gaby from languishing in East Berlin, and how, if he had been a little older, he and Napoleon might even have fought together, however uneasy the Soviet and American alliance had been during the war. 

“No adventures,” Gaby slurs aristocratically, happily swinging her feet and kicking Illya’s shin. “If he wakes up shouting Nazis again, we lock him in the bathroom.” 

“We could just tie him to the headboard, pre-emptively,” Napoleon says. 

“What an aggressive omega you are,” she laughs. “Isn’t it normally the other way around?”

Napoleon pours himself another drink; only his second, and holds it away from Gaby when she reaches for it. “It’s no fun tying me up, I can escape anything.”

Illya blushes while they argue, pressing his warm face against Napoleon’s shoulder. He points out, “It  _ is  _ fun to watch you squirm, though.” 

“Yes, but it’s fun to watch you squirm, too,” Gaby says, turning to run her hands through Illya’s hair. She smirks at Napoleon: “We better not let our enemies know how much he likes it.” 

Now Illya really does blush, and rolls his eyes. “Maybe you are the one who likes this, this—bondage, hm? Maybe we—” 

“Oh, I  _ do  _ like it. That’s why I want to do it to you,” Gaby says, listing against Illya as she begins to look sleepy. 

Illya gives up. She’s impossibly cute—and so is Napoleon, actually, almost too big for his lap but somehow fitting nicely. 

Napoleon lifts himself up again, and takes Gaby’s hand to lead her back into a slightly tipsy dance, and she reaches out and draws Illya into it. It’s a little awkward and difficult, but they manage, eventually finding a rhythm before Napoleon guides them into the bedroom. It’s gotten less and less often that they sleep in separate beds, and after a job well done he feels somewhat celebratory in that he just wants to settle down with the alphas he’d felt he could utterly rely on and relax. 

Gaby is almost asleep before they get her shoes off and tuck her in, despite her usual high tolerance for alcohol. Illya brushes her hair back from her forehead and pulls the blanket up to her shoulders. She’s beautiful, even passed out drunk. 

“Any other bad feelings, Peril?” Napoleon asks, as he draws the taller Alpha down for a kiss, distracting him while he undoes the buttons of Illya’s shirt. 

Illya winds his arms around Napoleon, leaning into the kiss until Napoleon has to tip his head back to keep kissing him, and he slides his hands down to palm at Napoleon’s ass. “No bad feelings, Cowboy. Only good ones.” 

Illya works deftly at Napoleon’s buttons, sliding his shirt off and throwing it over the back of a chair so it won’t wrinkle, knowing how particular Napoleon is. His own ends up on the floor.

They share the washroom, brushing their teeth elbow to elbow, but Illya finishes his routine quicker and slides into bed to curl around Gaby, putting off heat like a small furnace.  Napoleon eases in behind him, going easily to rest, feeling comfortable, instinctive pack-like feelings as he eases down to rest. His head and heart drift a little on the events of the day and the drinks they’d consumed and when he’s warm enough, he sleeps on a job well done. 


	7. Chapter 7

The next day they wake slowly, playfully, at their leisure and with slow touching and kisses. When they’ve sated their morning appetites, they stroll out into the city and go where their feet take them.

Gaby tries to deny her wonder at seeing the famous Eiffel tower, and Napoleon answers the call of his name and steps briefly into Les Invalides; long enough to see true opulence and smile at the irony to himself.

Perhaps his burial will not be so grand, but he consoles himself that he gets to step out of that place again and into the sunlight, with his thoughts untormented by Josephine.

“What about you, Illya? It’s your turn, and it’s only fair,” he asks, easing his arm through Illya’s in a familiar and comfortable way.

Illya takes a picture of Napoleon and Gaby standing together in front of a quaint cafe. Gaby looks gorgeous even when her sunglasses and hat cover up half her face, and Napoleon has rolled up his sleeves in the heat, so Illya can lust after his arms.

“Maybe we stop for a bite to eat, first?” he says, motioning to the cafe.

“At least something to drink,” Gaby agrees, removing her sunglasses. “It's entirely too warm.”

“Maybe we could see the sites of the Revolution?” Illya wonders, waggling his eyebrows playfully. He's aware he's a walking cliché. “Where they beheaded the monarchy, or something.”

“A whiff of grapeshot,” Napoleon agrees. “But first, more than that of good wine, I think.”

They ease into seats at the cafe, enjoying the afternoon sun as if they were proper tourists, Napoleon politely crossing his legs at the ankles as he takes his coffee and watches the people pass by, expression softer. He never seems to mind these moments where things slow down a little.

They sit in a circle and never stop watching each other's backs, even if they aren't watching their own. Illya thinks they make a good team, even when they are on vacation.

“Do you really want to see where they chopped a bunch of heads off?” Gaby asks Illya, requesting a coffee and something sweet in her terrible french, which Napoleon corrects absently so that she gets a pastry and not just a bowl of sugar.

Illya lets Napoleon order for him and shrugs at Gaby’s question. “Some of them probably deserved it.”

“Some of them certainly deserved it,” Napoleon says. “But best not talk too much about revolution to someone who shares a name with England’s greatest annoyance.”

He gives them a wink, finishing first his small, strong cup of coffee and then paying proper attention to the excellent glass of wine. “I have a game; mostly for you Gaby, since Peril has subscribed so fully to the ‘work until you die’ ethic. What will you do when you’re not a spy anymore?”

Gaby shrugged. “Figure out how to be independently wealthy?”

Illya snorted, thumping her knee companionably. He didn't plan to work until he died, really, but he didn't think any part of civilian life was for him.

She sipped her coffee. “I think I have some kind of British pension due to me. What about you, Napoleon?”

“If I ever work off what I owe, then I intend to earn another sentence twice as long,” he says, brazenly, with a smile. “I don’t expect to be caught this time. I’ll get old and fat in Italy, and when I die they’ll discover all the lost greats, and the original Mona Lisa.”

Gaby actually has to look twice at him to decide if he’s telling the truth, before she turns her attention to Illya. “And I suppose you’ll retire to Siberia and train sled dogs to attack capitalists?”

“How can I compete with this?” Illya laughs. “Then you’ll choose Napoleon over me and I’ll have no choice but to follow.”

He sips his coffee in an attempt at being demure. “Siberia is no place to grow old.”

He realizes he’s basically planning to crash Napoleon’s retirement, but the realization doesn’t startle him. Gaby seems to read his thoughts and gives him a knowing smile, and he smiles back.

“We can grow grapes,” Napoleon suggests, and then he changes his mind. “We can pay other people to grow grapes for us.”

“I’ll need _something_ to keep me busy,” Illya counters.

Gaby laughs, and they finish their nice light lunch, for a moment everything is normal; a hint of lives outside of what they are, who they will be for the next many years. Napoleon finds he hopes it is together, but knows that even if their team dissolved tomorrow they would still be interconnected. It’s a security like he hadn’t ever wanted in his younger days.

“Well, let’s go and finish seeing the sights, shall we?” he offers.

“We could also see the Louvre, if the Place de la Concorde is only of interest to me,” Illya offers. He has decided quite recently that art for art’s sake can be fascinating.

Gaby raises an eyebrow. “Interesting. I didn’t think you’d want me to have to put a leash on Napoleon _in public_.”  

“I would never steal from the Louvre,” Napoleon says, offended. They should know by now that Napoleon tends more toward liberating art from unappreciative situations and profiting by it. “And I dare you to try and leash me in _private_.”

Illya smiles wickedly: challenge accepted.

“We’ll go and see both,” Gaby says, firmly, nodding, and letting Napoleon take the lead. “I think we should give a whole day to the Louvre anyway.”

Illya shrugs, glad to go along with whatever his lovers prefer. It's almost a little funny that the alphas are letting the omega run their lives: maybe it's giving into some stereotypes, or maybe it's breaking them. But it works for them, and Napoleon boldly offers them each an arm after paying for the meal. Against their better judgment, they both are glad to hang off of him.

The Place de la Concorde is more suited to its name than its reputation as a good place for a beheading; there is a fountain, and an obelisk, and with the sun shining on it it seems in no way ominous. Napoleon appreciates both things, and then leans into Illya.

“Of course, since you suggested this place, you must be familiar with the history of these sculptures,” he says, before Gaby gets in on the joke; she’ll never forget his story about the stairs.

“Yes, Illya, tell us about the history of the fountain, it’s so lovely.”

The corner of Illya’s mouth turns up, even though he knows they are teasing him.

“The French Revolution occurred in 1781,” he begins, quite safely, and with a completely straight face, “according to French scholars. This is of course a corruption of 1918, the year following Communist revolution in Russia, and upon which this revolution is based.”

Gaby pretends to be enraptured, even as she covers her mouth with her hands and giggles.

“You laugh, of course, but Bolshevik revolutionaries basically ran the French revolution. Probably the lost Anastasia and Marie Antoinette were the same person.” But Illya can't even keep a straight face anymore, laughing at their little joke, and laughing at _himself_ , something he couldn't picture himself doing a few months ago.

“And of course, since the French revolution was a catching idea in the colonies,” Napoleon agrees, playing along with a smile that suggests he likes seeing Illya in this sort of mood. “We can thank Russia for coming up with the whole idea in retrospect.”

“Exactly,” Illya says smugly.

Gaby laughs at both of them. “Really, now. Is so much patriotism required?”

Illya hugs her a bit too familiarly and laughs. The patriotism does feel as silly as it sounds. His loyalties no longer lie with a country or a political ideal.

“Stand just here,” he tells them, stepping back to take their picture.

Napoleon has found Illya to be an avid photographer of events, and at first it had surprised him, but then later, he supposed everything felt so impermanent to the alpha that it made sense. He does stand just where he’s told, after a moment of fussing with his suit front and cufflinks to get everything straight.

Gaby, of course, manages to look effortlessly amazing, though both their eyes are trained on Illya with clear affection, rather than perpetuating the facade by just gazing at each other. After the first picture, Napoleon borrows a passer-by, speaking in smooth, rapid-fire French to make his request, and then drags Illya into the next photo, so they’ll have at least one proper.

Illya doesn't particularly like pictures of himself, but he submits to the photographs, and later turns the camera around to get a few blurry shots of all their faces with an architectural edifice in the background. They finish their tour in a public garden as the sun is going down, and Illya realizes they have spent an entire day just with...each other. And it was wonderful.

Gaby steals his camera at that point and makes Illya pose with Napoleon in front of a huge rose bush, and even that doesn't annoy him. “You have taken enough pictures of me. I could get some of you on this bridge.”

Illya didn't intend to use the entire roll of film on this one afternoon, but he's not going to argue with Gaby.

“Just making sure we have enough blackmail,” Gaby says, waiting for Illya to raise the camera and line up the shot before she practically leaps into Napoleon’s arms to kiss him.

Napoleon nearly drops her, but manages to catch hold of her somewhat inelegantly, swinging her around before he sets her down. “We’re losing the light. Shall we find some place nice to eat dinner? Or just go home and find better ways to entertain ourselves?”

“This is the counter-blackmail, remember?” Illya says, as the camera rolls loudly to the end of its film. “This is proof we are all good alphas and omegas.”

“Then we’re safe,” Gaby says, and puts an arm around Illya, who clicks his tongue but does nothing to really stop her. She grins at Napoleon. “My feet are a little tired. But I’m sure we could get up to something fun while we watch Illya develop his film.”

“I want to see you paint, Cowboy,” Illya suggests. “You’re supposed to be good at it, yes?”

“For that, I’ll need a few bottles of wine,” Napoleon says, as if the suggestion weren’t the one he’d make regardless of what they were asking him to do. “And a canvas.”

“Does that mean more walking?” Gaby complains.

“We can catch a cab, dear,” Napoleon offers. She jumps on his back instead, and he carries her for several steps, before protesting. “You’re wrinkling my suit!”

She sighs, and gets back onto her own feet as they gather the required supplies; one canvas, two wine bottles, and apparently he has paint in his kit already because he doesn’t purchase any.

Illya carries Gaby to the cab, and when they arrive at the hotel he orders room service on the way to their room: hot sandwiches and other things they can eat with their hands, to be delivered promptly (which, in France, could mean an hour or more).

“Anyone need to use the—?” he begins, as Gaby pushes past him and shuts the door in his face. He sighs in Napoleon’s direction but gets no sympathy, and gathers up his developing kit and his lamp and waits.

And when Gaby leaves the bathroom, she has freshened up her make up and let down her hair, and is not wearing a stitch of clothing. She focuses on Napoleon. “I want you to paint me and Illya.”


	8. Chapter 8

“Together? Like this?!” Illya nearly chokes. That would give everything away! Especially with her—like this. His thoughts stumble over themselves: they hadn’t been careful enough today. Maybe he shouldn’t develop any of these pictures after all. Maybe Napoleon should not paint anything. “Solo, no.”

Napoleon takes the whole thing in stride, amused, considering his options. “Do you, now?”

Gaby rounds on Illya as Napoleon starts to work with his paint on a palette; mixing color and water to his taste instead of any of the more temperamental mediums like oil or acrylic. 

“Together,” she says, reaching up to tug Illya down by the collar of his shirt, undoing his buttons starting at the top, her eyes locked on his to keep him distracted.

“Perhaps I should have gotten more wine than I did,” Napoleon says, setting his paint aside in favor of the corkscrew.

“Not—no,” Illya says, firmly, or he intends to say it firmly, but Gaby has backed him up against the doorframe and he stutters a little. “It is not…”

“Safe?” 

“ _ Smart _ ,” Illya says, and takes her hands, kissing her fingertips. “Gaby, please Think about this.” 

“I’ve never been  _ smart  _ a day in my life since I fell in with you lot,” Gaby says fiercely, and she is savage with his buttons. “It doesn’t have to be on the same canvas. Right, Napoleon? Two different paintings.” 

“I had something else in mind entirely,” Napoleon says, bringing them both a glass of wine, one hand carefully balancing two cups until he presses it into Illya’s hand. “Relax, Peril.”

Between the two of them, they strip Illya bare, and if Gaby is less considerate of ripping, Napoleon does his best to make things faster to at least spare Illya’s pants from meeting the same fate as his shirt—now a lamentable scrap pile of Italian linen that Napoleon knows better than to protest, lest his own meet the same fate.

Gaby shoves Illya down onto the couch, sitting over his lap and finishing her glass of wine before she sets it aside, pulling his big hands onto her, and then finally leaning back to let him  be on top for once, curling her hands around the back of his neck and kissing him until he forgets to worry. 

“I need to—” Illya begins to protest, but she is so soft and yielding beneath him that developing film goes right out of his mind. He kisses her for several minutes before he sits up. “Room service will be here, we can’t—” 

“Illya,” Gaby huffs, and unsettles him so that he topples off the couch and onto the low table beside it. He hits it hard and pouts deeply. 

“Solo,” he says, turning imploringly to Napoleon. “Even you are not this foolish.” 

“You could trust me a little,” Napoleon says, setting everything aside to come refill Illya’s glass, recovering the empty glass from the ground and pressing it into Illya’s hand. “But if you really don’t want to, you have to tell her that.”

He’s stripped down to his waistcoat and rolled up his sleeves, but not undressed any further and answers the light tap on the door—the aforementioned roomservice—with grace so neither of them need even rouse themselves as he receives the tray and gives a tip, and then they’re safe again with the door locked. 

Alone again, Illya and Gaby stare at each other. He’s sitting on the table, still, but he has sat up, drawing his knees to his chest for privacy. 

“What’s your decision, Peril?” Napoleon asks, eyes warm and calm and full of promise. 

They haven’t said anything, except Gaby has bitten her lip. She looks vulnerable but not quite innocent, and she sits with her legs spread and her hair loose behind her back, so he can see all of her. He’d like to blame her state of undress for his bad decision, but he knows better. 

“I do not think we should be naked in this picture,” he says finally, weakly. 

“I would argue that it’s tantamount that you should be,” Napoleon leans down and kisses Illya again, tilting his chin up, helping him off the table. His mouth tastes like wine and full of promises, and he pulls their bodies together until he can waltz Illya around in a small circle, him dressed and Illya not. “I promise to be kind.”

Kissing Napoleon is good, and dancing with him is somehow better, though he ordinarily hates dancing. Maybe because Napoleon is the right height, he doesn’t feel quite so large and awkward as when he dances with Gaby. “Now I worry you will paint me...not proportionate.” 

But Napoleon doesn’t answer, and with that, he spins Illya loose and back into Gaby’s embrace, and she pulls him down again. “I don’t.”

Gaby digs her nails into his shoulders and yanks him down onto the couch. “Are you done protesting?”

Illya is a tactical man, and the check and mate stand before him: the only way to win now would be to knock the board over, and he’s not a  _ cheater _ . So he drops his shoulders and sighs, but prepared to face the music instead of prepared to be a spoilsport, and he yields to Gaby’s arrangement. “Where do you want me?” 

He’s looking at Gaby, whose thighs he is straddling, but he asks the room at large. Dinner smells good, but he’s already pushed his luck, so that can wait. 

Gaby hums, delighted, and exchanges a grateful look with Napoleon. “How about it, Mr. Artist? How do you want us?” 

They can’t be sure if she twists the phrase like that on purpose or not. 

“Just do what feels natural,” Napoleon says, as Gaby pulls Illya down, arching her body up against his. “Don’t worry about keeping still.”

She pulls their mouths together again, rubbing her hands over his shoulders, kissing his lips, under his chin, his nose, until Illya softens from being quite so stiff, and relaxes with it. Napoleon moves away, but she distracts Illya with her hand on his cock, and her blunt nails on the skin of his back and shoulders, before she slides her other hand between them too and scratches a nail against one of his nipples until he gasps and looks at her, and stops looking anywhere else.

It’s then that he’s aware of Napoleon again; only he’s not standing by the canvas, but instead the soft, wet bristles of his brush descend onto Illya’s exposed back, leaving a trail of cold and pigment as he sits over the back of the couch, eyes lidded and heavy as he watches them and applies color with the palette balanced in his lap and held in his off-hand. He touches the bristles to Gaby’s skin, next, and Illya sees he leaves a trail of brilliant blue over her collarbone. 

It is perhaps an artist’s very liberal interpretation of ‘paint both of us,’ but you can’t tell an artist what his canvas is.

“Oh,” Illya says, stupidly, and he turns to grin at Napoleon, relieved and utterly charmed. 

Gaby is a little disappointed perhaps, but Illya kisses the pout away from her lips and then kisses his way down her body, sucking on each nipple hard enough that she pulls his hair to get him to stop before he'll move on. And as he drops to take her cock in his mouth they leave Napoleon with two canvases to paint on: her chest and his back.

Napoleon follows the path of Illya’s mouth over Gaby’s chest, touching his bristles into the wet trails Illya’s mouth had left on her nipples, letting the watercolor concentrated on his brush dilute and bloom outwards into the full of the water, turning his bristles against her sensitive skin until she gives him a warning look and he curls the brush away and leaves the paint to dry.

As Gaby arches her hips up, and kneads her fingers into Illya’s back, he describes each of the depressions her fingers make pressed into his skin with vivid pink, trailing and tracing down the faint red trails her nails had left earlier when she’s scratched Illya, ascribing different colors along these lines to accent them, and then unable to resist leaning down to kiss the back of Illya’s neck, and run the mostly-dry bristles of his brush down Illya’s side as Gaby arches up, distracting and leaving jagged-faint traces of paint as Illya tickles and startles. 

“Hey,” Illya says gruffly as he lifts his head to glare at Napoleon, only because the brushes tickling right there along his sides are going to distract him from his work more than arouse him. 

But this is beautiful: Gaby is already a picture in blue and red and pink blending into purple, and he moves her instead onto the low table where the paint can be washed off, and he kisses her thighs and further down until he works his tongue inside her, taking his time.

Napoleon’s brushes return, with firmer strokes as some sort of scene appears on his arms where they’re curled around Gaby’s thighs. The scene continues up Gaby’s legs and sides, and she sighs and moans in contentment, bracing her feet now on Illya’s shoulders, and watching Napoleon dance the tip of his brush over them both. “Tell me, Napoleon. Can the artist interfere with his subject, or does that sully the nature of the art?” 

“Hmm,” Napoleon says, thoughtful, as he strokes small, stippled marks onto the broad expanse of Illya’s back, glancing up into Gaby’s lust-clouded eyes over his shoulder and her own bent knee. “I suppose that depends on the interference. I mean the subject has every right to make requests.”

He pauses to drip what feels just like cold water on Illya’s ass. “Do you have a request?”

“Augh!” Illya snaps, straightening up and glaring. But before he can do anything rash, Gaby says,

“How about a kiss?” And she wraps her ankle around the back of Illya’s neck to bring his face back between her legs. “If you actually want to fuck me, Agent Kuryakin, I’m going to have to be much more relaxed.” 

Illya huffs once before returning to his work. He likes it, likes the taste of her, and he considers himself skilled at this, and soon loses himself in pressing into her with the flat of his tongue, and teasing her open with his fingers while he works his tongue around her huge knot. 

Napoleon sets his palette aside for a moment, and then moves to their side instead of behind them, sitting on the edge of the table and leaning over to kiss her, balancing the palette expertly in his far hand to avoid getting any trace of paint on him. Gaby moans and sighs into his mouth as she rolls her hips into Illya’s attention and then tilting her head back, as Napoleon slides his cool fingers down her body to palm the head of her cock and rub in small circles until she’s gasping and pushing her hips into it, against Illya. Napoleon kisses her again, and then shifts away despite her growl of warning.

He watches Illya instead, pausing to take off his waistcoat and step out of his shoes, returning to his painting. 

“All right, Illya, enough,” she says abruptly, grabbing a handful of his hair, making Napoleon’s stroke of yellow across the back of his neck go awry. “Fuck me.” 

Illya has been waiting for that, his eyes intense enough to stare through her as he crawls over her to kiss her, without even wiping his mouth. 

“Eugh!” she wants to say, but is moaning almost immediately, and gasps as he begins to slowly slide his cock into her. “Mm—yes, harder, all the—” 

She digs her nails into his thigh and he sheathes himself entirely, and neither of them breathe for a minute. 

Napoleon thinks they’re beautiful together; that they match in some ways and complement in different ones, and that both create this symmetry that nearly hypnotizes him. They  _ are _ an art, no matter what anyone else would say. Artful, Napoleon would argue. He watches the table heave a little slide as they push together, and he can appreciate all of them, all of this. The way they are together, a seamless line despite the differences in build and height. 

He shifts away to put the palette down, and then pauses by the canvas, watching them. The corner of his mouth turns up when neither even notices he’s stepped away. He sketches a few things in color on the canvas; a gesture like motion, the way the colors describe the lines of them and then meet and curve away. It’s not a likeness, but it is them, together, conceptually. He’ll finish it later. In the interim, he sinks down into a chair across the way and watches, waits, gets hard and doesn’t touch himself, yet.

“Illya,” Gaby sighs, feeling like she can’t possibly take any more of him. He’s too  _ big _ and too much and yet she wants; greedy. She wants him until it hurts, or until he’s spent,  _ all _ of him. She breathes out, arches her back just so for him to loop an arm under so they’ll  _ fit _ and then repeats her command. She glances down and sees color mixing; transferring from her skin to his. “Fuck me, don’t you dare go slow.”

“Gaby,” he echoes, at once possessing her and yielding to her will, taking her as sovereign—very old world, not very  _ Russian  _ of him, but he doesn’t care: it’s not German nor American of him, either, to be as devoted to them as he is. They are not bound to the countries of their birth but to each other. 

And that thought now is comforting instead of frightening. It is their countries that have rules against homosexuality and polyamory. Not they. 

But these cerebral thoughts soon abandon him, and Illya clutches Gaby to him like he wants to fuse together with her, and he fucks her hard, just like she wants, until her cries drown out the sound of skin slapping against skin. He palms her breasts and her cock and kisses her with teeth and tongue, tastes paint and hopes it won’t kill him, and says, “Gaby, come for me.” 

She does, like her body heeded him without bothering to check in with any other part of her, digging her nails into his shoulders and rocking her hips up to take him as deep as he’ll go before her body clamps down on him and she paints their stomachs with jets of release as she gasps his name against his ear.

Napoleon shifts, gripping the handrests of the chair and leaning in; watching. It almost feels as intense for him as it must for them, and he has to actually loosen his collar, shift his seat in the chair, and his pulse is sympathetic. He feels like he’s catching his breath with them. 

A few more thrusts and Illya comes after her, his knot swelling to lock them together, and he braces himself on his elbows on the table as their kisses turn soft. 

“Mm, good,” Gaby says, swiping a thumb through the mess on her belly and painting Illya’s lips with it. He sighs and licks her thumb clean, and she follows it with a kiss. “Napoleon? You’re being very good. Would you like to fuck Illya like this?” 

Napoleon considers this, eyes glassy, watching them together, and the way Illya’s tongue pokes out eagerly against her thumb does something in his middle that he finds hard to resist.

“I’m considering my options,” he manages, his voice lighter than his body feels. “But I think I can be patient enough to have both of you.”

He  _ wants _ both of them, feeling particularly covetous of them in their colors now, the way they’ve blended. He doesn’t wear any of his own, but he will. He can wait for that. He presses his thumb against his eye tooth and watches them, hungry.

Gaby laughs. “Greedy.”

Illya had been about to voice some kind of protest to Gaby’s suggestion, but Napoleon turning them down, if only for the moment, actually wounds his pride a little, and he is embarrassed at how far gone he is for both of them.

“You don’t want me like this?” Illya asks, without meaning to sound so needy, his voice so strained. Gaby actually laughs at him, so he gets himself under control and asks more evenly: “How do you want us, then?” 

His knot isn’t going to go down for a while, and actually his knees and elbows ache on the table, and the drying paint tickles his back.

Napoleon actually gets up in answer to the faint desperation in Illya’s voice. He admits, though perhaps there’s more of a meaning and more truth in it than he expects, though he doesn’t mean it in any way but the physical (or so he tells himself). “I want you like she has you.”

He passes them by, pausing to trail his fingers over Illya’s spine in naked affection before he retrieves one of the sandwiches from the room service cart, and actually makes a show of taking the effort to eat it, as if he were fully restrained. He can’t quite distance himself from the trickle of slick easing down his leg inside his trousers, but he can pretend. “And her like you have her.”

“In the middle again?” Gaby sits up, pushing Illya. It’s difficult for them to move this way, but if she puts her hands tight around his neck and her legs tight around his hips they can shift back onto the couch, ignoring Napoleon’s warning hiss about paint and chintz. 

He brings them both some water, leaning over the back of the couch to press a kiss to Illya’s cheek, and then hers, leaving the scent of himself with them, undeniably. He agrees, “In the middle. I can be patient.”

Illya and Gaby breathe it in, chests heaving together, their noses turning together to follow Napoleon’s scent. He moves beautifully, he smells divine, and they can see the dark line of slick down his trousers, and they actually moan together. They feel like one being, joined like this. Their attachment to each other only magnifies their desire for the omega. For Napoleon. 

“All right. The middle. We will paint you this time,” Illya says, as he lays Gaby back. They are both still looking at him, but more because they don’t need to look at each other, any more than they need to look at themselves. The alpha part of them has slipped into pack hunting mode, waiting. 

Gaby reaches for him, beckons him close. “Will you take off your clothes for us, pretty Napoleon?” 

“I was hoping you’d ask,” Napoleon says, fingers careful on his buttons since they have a few unavoidable touches of paint. He leaves his shirt behind somewhere the white linen is safe from any errant spots of paint, and then works on peeling off his pants; these he leaves on the floor, they’ll need a proper cleaning. 

He gives his own cock a stroke, already hard and eager for them. He answers Gaby’s beckon, crouching alongside the couch to kiss her, and then kiss Illya, though there’s a smear of paint on his mouth—a good thing he’d chosen watercolor. 

Illya grins, touching the splash of red from Gaby’s lips that has transferred to Napoleon’s. He wraps an arm around Napoleon’s shoulder to kiss him, blue paint leaving behind a mark of where he had been. He  _ likes  _ this. 

“Alright, now we will ruin these sheets,” he says, standing up and lifting Gaby with him, his casual strength impressing them both thoroughly as he carries her to the bed. 

“Mm, I should like to see you throw Napoleon around like this,” Gaby said, squirming on his knot as she wraps her arms around his neck. 

“He can do it,” Napoleon tells her, joining the both of them on the bed, though he puts the comforter on the floor to protect it from the worst of this. The sheets—well, they’re a lost cause. “I mean, he can if I don’t fight back.”

“Ha,” Illya answers.

They both know better, but Napoleon comes to sit behind Gaby, so that he can kiss her shoulders and rub her back, reaching down between Illya and Gaby’s bodies to trace patterns in the drying cum, stained with paint, tickling her a little. 

Illya likes watching them interact; rather than feeling jealous, it makes him feel happy that they are happy, that they are as pleased with each other as he is with them. 

“Next time, I’ll watch,” she says, rocking her hips a little; it still feels good to have Illya there, though it took a while for her to get used to how  _ big _ his knot gets. 

“You can do the painting, then,” Napoleon agrees, easing his fingers down a little more to where they’re joined and rubbing around the base of Illya’s cock, just teasing a little. 

Illya’s hips twitch, and Gaby’s hands go to his chest to brace herself. They both gasp, and Napoleon looks a little too smug. 

“Come here,” Illya says, grabbing Napoleon and wrestling him onto his back, trying to get both of them beneath him. 

It’s not a move Napoleon expects, and the extra weight of Gaby—who commits utterly to shoving Napoleon over when she realizes what Illya is doing—is enough to press Napoleon flat and trap him under Gaby’s back with a faintly indignant sound. 

Gaby grins at Illya. “What’s your plan now?”

Illya shrugs. “I do not know. To keep both of you, forever.” 

He says it so easily, as easily as he lifted her up or wrestled Napoleon into submission, that it makes Gaby smile. “Will it impugn your masculinity if we  _ allow  _ ourselves to be kept?” 

“I suppose if we really don’t approve we could always just bite you until you changed your mind,” Napoleon agrees, working to free his hands from under the pin of Gaby’s body. He manages to get one hand on Illya’s ass, and strokes two fingers into the cleft of it, teasing. “But what a waste not to keep you back. It’s not every day you find an Alpha willing to explore all his options.”

“Even if he whines about it sometimes,” Gaby agrees. 

Illya rocks into her again, groaning on Napoleon’s fingers, but his knot is starting to go down. “I do not whine  _ that  _ much.”

Gaby laughs. “You do, though. You like disagreeing with us.” 

“Not true,” Illya laughs, and they, two fully grown adult alphas, start trying to tickle each other. 

Napoleon shoves them both, then, because he’s getting the worst of flying knees and elbows, managing to extricate himself just as Gaby finally eases free of Illya’s knot with a yelp, and then she shoves Illya over and starts to tickle him mercilessly. If Napoleon lends a hand to overpower Illya, it’s only to make things fair.

Then, after trading glances with each other, they both turn on Napoleon and start to wrestle him into submission. 

“You said you wanted to be in the middle,” Gaby laughed, half-tickling Napoleon, though he's not nearly as ticklish and she gives up. “How about on the bottom? Of both of us?”

They slide each to one side of him, again in sync, like pack hunters, and Illya gets a hand on his cock while Gaby teases his nipples with her sharp fingernails. They're close and pinning his arms, so he can't move much. 

“You want both of us to fuck you again, Cowboy? Let both of your alphas spoil you while you're alert enough to appreciate it?” Illya hums and bites along his jaw and neck.

“That’s,” Napoleon’s voice pauses on a gasp, but the note of protest is there, half mixed with intrigue. He has to get his thoughts together on this one; he  _ wants _ it, of course, but his mind does that thing where it runs over his thoughts with logic. He finishes in a grunt while they tease him, “going to be considerably harder when I’m not in heat.”

“ _ Harder _ , you said?” Gaby wonders, sliding her hand down to behind where Illya’s is stroking his cock to finger him open until Napoleon gasps. “What’s the matter, Cowboy, I thought you liked a challenge?”

“Well,” Napoleon tries, but his body betrays him, oozing more slick at the idea of it. “Assuming Peril can oblige…”

“I could always rally for Cowboy,” Illya says, blushing rather sweetly, and leaning in to kiss him. “But if you don’t think you can handle it…”

“We’ll go slow,” Gaby finishes, her eyes a bit predatory. “Illya, you’ll get him started?” 

It’s technically a question, but she’s not really asking. But Illya’s glad to slide down Napoleon’s body and hitch his legs up over his shoulders. His hole is already slick and leaking, so he focuses on rimming his asshole, and using his slick to work him open with his fingers. 

“You’ll be so pretty, spitted between us,” Gaby hums, running her fingers through his hair and kissing him. “We’ll take our time with you, make sure you’re nice and loose for us. How’s that sound, beautiful?”

Napoleon’s answer is inarticulate, his body going slack in Gaby’s lap as Illya does things with his tongue that make him want to melt through the mattress. His head tilts back to bare his neck, almost on instinct, offering himself up in vulnerability as Gaby rakes the order out of his hair with her fingers and leaves him tousled and unkempt. 

“I’ll take that as ‘good’,” she says, reaching down to stroke his cock while Illya works, though she’s unhurried and teasing, gliding him along the edge that Illya’s trying to ride him right up against, before she dips her fingers down and into him to coat her palm with slick, looking at how the paint is flaking and re-wetting itself in sweat in some places, and she thinks they’re both art together, too. 

Illya pauses to smile up at her, and he kisses the insides of Napoleon’s thighs, gently, and slicks up his fingers with the river of the stuff pouring out of him to work his ass open wide enough to take Gaby. “How about it, Cowboy, you think you can take both our knots, too, hm? I don’t think you’re not in heat, look at all this slick.” 

“That,” Napoleon sighs, arching his body to make things easier as Illya presses his very clever fingers into him, “is entirely your fault. The both of you.”

He pats Napoleon’s side, continuing to praise him as he goes in for more, licking and prying him open, relaxing him, until his knees just fall open and he’s so boneless that Gaby can arrange him however she likes. “How is he, Illya?”

“As beautiful down here as he is up there,” Illya reports, his chin and nose smeared with shiny slick and bright streaks of paint that he doesn’t bother to wipe off. “Ready for you.”

“Mm,” she says, like she’s about to devour a tasty sweet, and they slide back around Napoleon until he’s on his side, and Gaby is hugging his back while Illya tugs his wayward limbs around him. He helps Napoleon get one leg up over his hips, and Gaby’s fingers are already inside him. “He even  _ smells _ good.”

She leans over Napoleon’s shoulder to kiss his cheek before she has to slide down—not quite so far as she needs to for Illya, but it’s still somewhat impractical to find herself so  _ much _ shorter than either of her lovers at times. 

“Also your fault,” Napoleon says, leaning forward to kiss the wet streak off Illya’s nose, pulling him closer still so their cocks line up together as Gaby starts to push into him, slick and easy and slow, and Napoleon sighs against Illya’s mouth, leans his forehead against Illya’s as he takes her in increments to the knot.

It’s a lot, and this time he feels aware and lucid, counting every inch as his body springs up a cool sweat with the effort. 

Illya holds him, cradling the back of his head with one arm while he holds Napoleon’s leg up and pins his arm down with the other. “Ahh, sh, that's it, you've got it, that's our pretty omega, can take anything for us.”

And that's the best part of this arrangement for all of them. They can be gentle, and they can go slow, but they are going to have what they all want. 

“It's all right, Napoleon. You breathe, and you relax,” Gaby coaches, kissing the line of sweat on his spine and stroking his cock—though they don't actually want him to come just yet—rocking her hips in shallow motions until her knot begins to swell.

“Illya? You had better get in here.” Gaby’s voice is a little strained.

Illya doesn't need to be told twice, and he guides his cock in past Napoleon’s rim, into that slick heat. Napoleon seems to take him easier, though he's not in up to his knot yet. “How is this, Cowboy? Still going to ride two horses at once?”

“Ugh,” Napoleon groans. “You made a cowboy joke.”

Gaby chuckles against his shoulder and rolls her hips a little, backing off to give Illya the space to move, and Napoleon has to shift a little to make it work, to find a way that having both of them is going to fit and be comfortable, and it’s  _ so _ much.

“Only fair,” he grunts, somewhere recalling he’d made a few bad puns in his time involving their collective nicknames. He takes a deep, slow breath, focusing inward, relaxing his body as much as he can. They all have to strain a little, Gaby keeping herself as still as she can as Napoleon reaches down to help, to guide Illya’s knot into him just  _ so _ , and then stops to pant for breath. He feels stretched and held open already, and he knows it’s going to get worse—and then better, so much better, once his body adjusts.

“You’re okay,” Gaby assures him, giving a little thrust to reassure him that he can take it, because he  _ is.  _

Napoleon actually makes a soft noise, low in his throat, loose as he can be and slung between them like there was no other place in the world. Certainly, there’s no other place that feels like  _ this _ . 

“He's okay,” Illya agrees, though they’re all straining, trying to hold back their instincts so no one gets hurt. It's both easier and harder than when Napoleon was in heat. There's no lack of slick, but his body is tighter. He is, however, more lucid and more helpful. “Aren't you, Cowboy?”

He and Gaby make a V-shape with their bodies, pulling away from Napoleon slightly to get a better angle going into him. “Okay, I—”

Gaby is on the edge, and in a few more thrusts she comes, beautiful in orgasm, and her knot expands enough that Illya can feel it and it makes his eyes cross. It's already making Gaby’s eyes cross, and she's afraid to breathe lest she split Napoleon in half. She holds him around his waist like she can never let go.

Napoleon’s breath hitches in, then pours out of him in a whining groan, his hands gripping Illya’s arms hard as the pressure seems almost impossible at first. How had he ever done this, even in heat? It blots his thoughts out with the sensation of  _ so much,  _ and Napoleon has to focus directly on keeping his body from tensing up, especially when she fills enough to rub right against his prostate, to trap it between her full knot and Illya’s. It dashes a stuttering sound out of him that’s higher than his usual, sends another rush of slick washing between them.

“Easy, Cowboy,” Illya coaches, holding him still and rolling him back against her. “Easy, right? You can do this. We have you. Such a good omega.”

“Easy,” Napoleon gasps; a repetition, and not a request for clemency. His nails are digging into Illya’s shoulders, even as Gaby kisses his back and soothes him. He manages, swallowing, wetting his mouth, “If you move even a little, Peril, I’m going to cum so hard I see stars.”

“I think that’s a request,” Gaby purrs. 

“If you do that, I come as well,” Illya reports with a strained voice, his lips pressed to Napoleon’s sweaty temple. “You ready for that, Napoleon?” 

Napoleon wonders if he has much choice, but he closes his eyes and breathes out against Illya’s cheek. “When you start, push as deep as you can. Get your knot behind Gaby’s.”

She shakes her head against Napoleon’s back. It was going to be tight no matter what, but he knew his body.

“Okay,” Napoleon says, a little abruptly as Gaby gets her hand on his cock to hurry them both along.

“Okay,” Illya repeats, and grabs Napoleon under his knee so he can plough into him, slipping past his rim with something like a pop before all at once, he comes, his knot expands, and Napoleon gives a shout and comes, too, nearly simultaneously. Illya holds Napoleon close and still as he fights, just a little, to accept the girth of him, and he plants soft kisses all across his face while Gaby strokes his cock through orgasm, and he keeps coming for what seems like forever until the space between them is drenched. 

The pair of them are absolutely grinding his prostate between their knots and all Napoleon can manage is a wrung-out sounding groan as his body twitches and tries to keep pouring release through Gaby’s fingers, the constant pressure just enough to make his whole  _ self _ feel pinched between them. Finally, he just  _ can’t _ anymore, his body doesn’t have anything left to give, and he gasps out, sucks in air and tries to catch his breath. 

“You’re alright, my love,” Gaby pours into his ear. “Both of you, so beautiful for me. We’ve got you, sweet omega. Relax.”

“I can hardly do anything but,” Napoleon whispers, open and vulnerable to them in a way that he’d find unsettling at any other time, but for right now he can’t feel anything about it. He’s out of things to feel except contentment and a desire to  _ not move _ until someone’s knot went down. He thinks Gaby’s stamina will be subject to Illya’s, given the way they’re pressed together inside him through what feels like only the thinnest wall in his body. 

They nudge closer again, lifting him up between them, so that he moves each time they breathe, like he’s adrift on an ocean. The paint from their bodies has swirled into his skin, making Napoleon a part of their pretty picture. 

“Thank you, Napoleon,” Gaby whispers, cradling him and brushing her fingernails up and down his side. “We love you.” 

Napoleon, just starting to relax, tenses up just a little at those words, or perhaps Gaby’s nails tickling his side. He hadn’t expected them, and they sink down under and into him as deep as they have, together.

“So much,” Illya agrees, kissing Napoleon’s throat where he’s thrown his head back. Illya gets his arms around Gaby, too, and they lay like that, tangled and knotted together, kissing and sighing softly back and forth. “Alright, Gaby?” 

She nods, grinning almost sleepily up at him. “ _ All _ alright.” 

Their voices surround him with softness that he’d never expected, having cultivated an appreciation for the rougher, faster things in life. For all he’s a covetous sort, this does strange things to his attachments. He lets go of the earlier concern, and goes easy, softly to rest between them. He can panic about it later. “Alright, so long as no one moves too much. And a bath is on the horizon.”

“No moving,” Illya promises, and actually closes his eyes. 

“And a bath,” Gaby adds, and Illya opens his eyes to find Gaby giving him a pointed glare. He always wanted to roll over and go to sleep, but Gaby and Napoleon were meticulous. 

“Of course. Anything for our omega,” he says, attempting to tease, but when he says it aloud he finds he means it. 

Gaby hums, pleased, and is a warm weight behind Napoleon while they wait for their bodies to unlock.


	9. Chapter 9

Gaby’s knot goes down first, as usual, but she doesn’t get up until they can both come with her. And Illya does, in fact, fall asleep, so when his knot deflates and Napoleon can breathe again, he has to be awoken. 

Gaby leans over Napoleon’s shoulder and kisses his mouth, which seems to rouse him a little but not to action, so Napoleon just picks him up after a moment like a sack of potatoes and they head into the bathroom over his protests. They’re all streaked in paint and cum, and Napoleon is fairly sure he’s going to feel this for a week.

Illya complains at being so rudely awakened, marveling a bit that Napoleon can even  _ walk _ (he tells his wounded pride that Napoleon’s body is built for this, and his own is not). “Put me down! I was getting up!” 

They run the bath hot, and Napoleon sets Illya down to get in on his own power, and wonders if Waverly is ever going to complain about their exorbitant hotel bills because they always insist on a bath big enough to fit all three of them. 

“I’m going to get some of that food we ordered earlier,” Gaby says, trotting out quickly. “I”m starving!”

“Oh right, food!” Illya says, and before he can figure out how to ask Gaby to bring him something in a way that won’t upset her, she has returned with the entire tray. He tucks in; though the sandwiches are cold, they still taste good. 

Sated, they turn to find Napoleon sinking into the bath, looking a picture already. 

He must have sighed out loud, because Gaby giggles at him. 

“He is pretty, isn’t he?” 

“I swear this is not hormones talking,” Illya tells him. “You are a very handsome man, and we like to look at you.” 

In fact, if they will sit still long enough, Illya thinks he’ll turn off all the lights in the bathroom and start developing his film. 

Napoleon cracks an eye and looks at both of them. “You two make a bit of a picture yourselves; as messy as you are, you’re still very attractive.”

“Now whose fault is this?” Illya says.

He shifts in the water, paddling his fingers through it invitingly. “Come join me, lovely alphas. Complete the picture, won’t you?”

Gaby is already on her way, and Illya follows close. 

There’s a sensation in Napoleon of unmooring; somewhere a line is too tight, somewhere something in him needs to be loose and free of this entrapment, while the rest of him wants to sink down into it like the bath and embrace everything he’d eschewed for so long. It causes a sort of schism in him; rifting between soul and body. 

Then Gaby puts a glass of champagne in his hand and Napoleon promptly forgets how much the hot water is stinging his abused orifices in favor of a deeply rooted affection for her. For  _ both _ of them really. 

“I’ve been rather hollowed out by the creative process,” Napoleon says, sipping his drink. “I think I’ll take a week off.”

“I want to see what you scribbled on those canvases,” Gaby purrs, sliding into his arms and tasting the champagne from his lips. “If it’s the last art by Napoleon Solo.” 

“Why on earth would it be the last art?” Napoleon wonders. 

“I just mean—for the week.” 

“It will need a little retouching.”

“We shall have to clean up the room,” Illya insists. “We can’t leave it with paint everywhere. We do not get paid  _ that  _ much.” 

“At least it’s watercolor,” Napoleon agrees, leaning against Illya comfortably as he drinks champagne.

Illya sighs, tucking his head against Napoleon’s shoulder. He enjoyed today, for all that it had no purpose and yet somehow left him very tired. He’s going to love it more when he has the film developed: there are pictures in that roll he knows he will cherish forever. 

“Thank you, for today,” he admits quietly, to the sound of sloshing water, “Cowboy. Gaby.” 

“Thank you, too, Peril,” Napoleon says, feeling unaccountably soft toward both of them. 

“You’re entirely too soppy after sex,” Gaby says, grinning. “Both of you.” 

But her smile and the way she kisses them says she likes it. 

After they soak for a bit, Illya kisses them both and gets up. “Do not get up. I am going to develop our pictures now, all right?” 

He dresses in a robe and leaves to get his kit, returning with a red lamp and running a string up to hang the photos before setting out his pans. “I’m going to open a window, so you might heat up the water.” 

“However will we manage that?” Napoleon wonders, boneless and relaxed in the extreme.  His mind is whirring away, but his body doesn’t have the energy to follow it up with anything other than exhaustion. 

Gaby turns the faucet on, running only hot water into the cooling bath, and she sighs out, too, watching the paint from their skin swirl away and disperse.

“Come here, Gaby, I’ll do your hair,” Napoleon offers, amicably. She submits to this, and both of them watch Illya frown and focus on the thin brown strips in his hand, his features painted strangely in the red light and faint breeze. He lathers first shampoo into her hair, then conditioner, taking his time with it as she leans into him and sighs. 

“That is my job,” Illya mutters, not looking up. “I should be jealous.” 

But he’s smiling softly; he could not conceive of jealousy in this moment. 

“Also, you somehow always manage to get  _ out  _ of this,” Gaby points out, and snorts into her champagne. 

“Hush, or I shall destroy this photo of your best angle,” Illya replies, hanging up what’s sure to be a pretty picture of Gaby reclining in Napoleon’s arms, her skirt short and her laughter bright. 

“If you’re so jealous, you can do mine,” Napoleon suggests, gently supporting Gaby’s head as she leans back to rinse out the conditioner, rubbing his broad fingers gently against her neck. “Then we’ll all be even.”

“Who’s going to do Illya’s hair?” Gaby wonders, setting her glass aside now that it’s empty.

“I don’t even think he does his own hair,” Napoleon teases, kissing her cheek. “It froze that way in Siberia and still hasn’t unthawed.” 

Illya ignores the jab, but the mysteries of hair are quite beyond him at the best of times, so it's a fair point. But once the photos are hanging up to develop, Illya puts away his kit and sits next to the bath again. 

“Lean forward, or I cannot wash your hair,” he whispers in Napoleon’s ear.

Napoleon actually shivers, a full-body motion that betrays exactly what Illya does to him in proximity and leaves Gaby laughing at him and shifting away to give him room in the tub as he surrenders himself to Illya’s sturdy, confident hands. 

“You could have a future in this if you wanted,” Napoleon purrs as Illya sinks his fingers into his wet curls, only giving up the truth of how curly it truly is when it’s soaked like this. He shifts, and then puts his arms up on the high side of the tub, resting his chin on them so he can watch Illya while he lathers Napoleon’s hair, eyes lidded and heavy with pleasure. “I mean, specifically for me.”

“You can’t have him forever,” Gaby laughs, splashing Napoleon’s shoulders. 

Napoleon actually closes his eyes, leaning into Illya’s touch. “Just the next ten minutes or so.” 

Illya is good with his hands, and he massages down Napoleon’s neck and shoulders until he is absolutely putty in his hands, and then leans him back to rinse his hair, careful not to get anything in his eyes. 

Illya has barely said “Alright—” when Gaby throws herself in between them, sending a wave of water over the edge.

“My turn!”

Illya laughs, pushing her damp hair to one side to give her a massage, too. 

Napoleon settles opposite, though he could drag himself out of the tub and start to dry off at any time, and he probably should before he starts to prune. Instead he rubs Gaby’s feet while Illya works on her shoulders.

“Now this is more like it,” Gaby sighs, pleasurably, relaxed in the utmost. “I suppose I’ll keep the two of you.” 

Napoleon chuckles, and gets out of the tub at last.

“Hey, I didn’t say you could stop,” Gaby calls after him, as he sets about drying himself on a luxurious towel and then combing his hair into place as if they weren’t about to all probably go to bed. He pauses to look up at the string of hanging photographs that Illya has developing, and smiles to himself. “Illya you have quite the eye. Are you sure you’re not an artist?”

Napoleon can only tell Illya is touched because his ears turn red. “Not really. Maybe I just have a good eye.” 

Illya turns around and regards Napoleon, with a towel slung low enough across his hips as to be merely suggestive, and his hair in absurdly good order, and his eyes such a bright blue, the black-and-white of the camera is no more a handicap than Napoleon’s watercolors: the color is impossible to recreate. No, he is certainly no artist, but he has an eye for art. 

Napoleon quirks a smile at Illya, hitching one hip against the counter. “You have beautiful eyes. Only makes sense you’d have at least one good one.”

He winks, and then retrieves a towel for Gaby to step into as she pulls the plug and gets out of the bath as well, yawning. “Keep flirting, boys, I love it.”

Illya responds by kissing Napoleon’s cheek, and catching both of them in his arms. They’re both warm and damp and smell clean and sweet. “I am not very good at flirting.” 

But he lifts them both, one in each arm, and carries them off to bed. “How’s this?” 

“Impressive,” Napoleon laughs, settling down between them in a comfortable pile. Illya cradles himself against Napoleon’s back like their bodies were made to fit together, while Gaby cuddles in under the sheets in front of him.

It’s not until he’s nearly drowsed all the way off that the panic hits him. Napoleon’s heart pounds, his mind chases itself around in circles as he tries to find the best, the most human, the wisest recourse. The thing that will protect him the most.

By the time the morning comes, he’s vanished, leaving a void between Gaby and Illya that they close instinctively, well before they wake up. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...Oh yes. He did. 
> 
> Please subscribe to the series! 
> 
> As always, this is Cognomen's fault! ;)


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